The Charlie Kirk Show - Yet Another Attempted Trump Assassination

00:00:03.000 My name is Charlie Kirk.

00:00:05.000 I run the largest pro American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic.

00:00:11.000 My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth.

00:00:14.000 If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable.

00:00:19.000 But if the most important thing is doing good, you will end up purposeful.

00:00:24.000 College is a scam, everybody.

00:00:26.000 You got to stop sending your kids to college.

00:00:27.000 You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible.

00:00:31.000 Go start a Turning Point USA College chapter.

00:00:33.000 Go start a Turning Point USA High School chapter.

00:00:35.000 Go find out how your church can get involved.

00:00:37.000 Sign up and become an activist.

00:00:39.000 I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade.

00:00:41.000 Most important decision I ever made in my life.

00:00:44.000 And I encourage you to do the same.

00:00:45.000 Here I am.

00:00:46.000 Lord, use me.

00:00:48.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:49.000 Here we go.

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00:01:14.000 All right.

00:01:17.000 Welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show, April 27th, 2026.

00:01:22.000 We're here in Phoenix, Arizona at the Y Refi Studio.

00:01:26.000 How are we doing, Blake?

00:01:27.000 You know, we're not having the show we thought we would have today.

00:01:29.000 We're not having the show.

00:01:30.000 We didn't have the show on Saturday that we thought we were going to have either.

00:01:34.000 I was actually at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, as many of you.

00:01:38.000 Probably know by now.

00:01:39.000 I didn't say much about it before the event.

00:01:42.000 I was honored to be invited by a few different outlets, Wint, and sitting next to Harmeet Dillon.

00:01:50.000 And the night was going along.

00:01:53.000 It was great, having a good time, meeting a lot of old friends, saying hi to new ones.

00:01:58.000 And then, you know, while we're sitting there waiting for the food to get served, President Trump, JD Vance, and others on the dais, on the stage, all of a sudden, you start seeing everybody duck for cover.

00:02:13.000 Did you hear anything?

00:02:14.000 I heard essentially what I, you know, I thought somebody was kind of going like that.

00:02:19.000 Like, I clocked something in the back of my mind as, you know, maybe a tray fell or, but I actually thought, you know, somebody was pounding because it was such a raucous, cacophonous room.

00:02:32.000 And I will just say, you know, there's been a lot of talk about the security in that room.

00:02:36.000 But for me, it was like when we were in there, you couldn't navigate.

00:02:40.000 The tables were so close together.

00:02:43.000 That if people were sitting in the chairs, there was zero room to navigate in between.

00:02:48.000 And so it was a, I mean, God forbid that place had a fire.

00:02:53.000 People would not have gotten out, guaranteed.

00:02:56.000 I mean, it was a total fire hazard, I will say.

00:02:59.000 That does sound like something Trump might do.

00:03:00.000 They're like, Mr. President, it's gotten too full.

00:03:02.000 He's like, nah, make the event bigger than I thought.

00:03:05.000 I mean, I don't know who made that kind of decision, but it was a tight squeeze.

00:03:09.000 So essentially, you heard this noise, but again, you kind of just assumed there was a lot going on.

00:03:15.000 Somebody dropped something or whatever.

00:03:17.000 And then, little by little, starting in the back of the room, you saw people ducking underneath their tables.

00:03:24.000 And so, sure enough, we dove underneath our table, and you could see the thing that I will never forget was the urgency.

00:03:34.000 I would call it like a violent urgency of the Secret Service as everybody dives under the table because you could hear them yelling and you could see them running.

00:03:43.000 And there was like, they were throwing chairs to get them out of the way.

00:03:46.000 And you're like, whoa, something is up.

00:03:49.000 And so everybody just starts.

00:03:50.000 We dive under the table.

00:03:53.000 We're there again.

00:03:54.000 Time was sort of a blur, but I would assume maybe three to five minutes under the table, under the, you know, and you kind of, I'm peeking out.

00:04:01.000 I'm trying to see if the coast is clear.

00:04:04.000 Then it becomes, did President Trump get shot?

00:04:07.000 Because I'm looking, I kind of looked at it.

00:04:10.000 It was probably a lot harder for you guys to tell.

00:04:12.000 No, we had no idea what happened because I look up, they're all gone off the stage, and you see, you know, tactical outfitted Secret Service on the stage, and you see them marching down the middle.

00:04:26.000 And you see them.

00:04:27.000 And by the way, so I was so close up to, I was essentially house left, stage right, a couple rows back from the stage.

00:04:34.000 And the Secret Service came right by our table and walked on our chairs.

00:04:40.000 So a Secret Service put his boot on the chair I was just sitting on as they were navigating in the room.

00:04:46.000 Her meat's head was kind of poked up a little bit. 0.98

00:04:50.000 She got stepped on.

00:04:52.000 Yeah, like, I mean, it's a poor thing, actually. 0.92

00:04:54.000 She had a welt on her head from getting stepped on.

00:04:57.000 I mean, this, in theory, could be the next. 0.98

00:04:59.000 Attorney General of the United States. 0.86

00:05:01.000 She got stepped on by a Secret Service that were working with such urgency.

00:05:04.000 And they obviously had no idea who was at what table.

00:05:09.000 So eventually everything kind of calms down.

00:05:11.000 I get up.

00:05:13.000 Everybody starts kind of rising.

00:05:14.000 I see Philip Wegman, who's with the Wall Street Journal.

00:05:16.000 I said, Phil, did they get, like, is the president okay?

00:05:19.000 Because at this point I'm like, did you, did there was a shot that came from the president?

00:05:22.000 And there's bad reception in that room because it's underground.

00:05:24.000 There was no reception.

00:05:25.000 Nobody could make phone calls.

00:05:27.000 So I asked Phil, I said, you know, did they get the president?

00:05:30.000 Is JD okay?

00:05:31.000 Because in theory I'm thinking, did, A shock came from the back of the room, and I just didn't hear it, and it got President Trump.

00:05:38.000 Well, Phil says that they had actually watched him get off the table.

00:05:43.000 Next thing I know, Brian, off the stage, so he was okay.

00:05:46.000 JD, he said, I didn't see JD.

00:05:48.000 Next thing I know, Brian Stelter of CNN is up on the stage doing a selfie video.

00:05:54.000 I don't know.

00:05:54.000 It was, you know, and it's a room full of journalists.

00:05:58.000 And so they're all got their cameras out doing live reporting, I think just to record the videos.

00:06:04.000 I was enjoying the split between journalists who filmed events around them and the ones taking Celsius videos of themselves.

00:06:11.000 So I instantly ran over.

00:06:13.000 I was probably about 10 tables away, 12 tables away from where Erica was seated.

00:06:17.000 I ran over there as quickly as I could because it was so crammed and jammed, I could only make it over there so quickly.

00:06:24.000 And she had already been ushered out.

00:06:26.000 I ran into Harris Faulkner and I ran into Martha McCallum, and they said that they had seen Erica get ushered out.

00:06:33.000 She was okay.

00:06:35.000 Harris and Erica, I believe, were under the same table praying when it was all happening.

00:06:41.000 And I mean, it was a terrifying moment.

00:06:43.000 You know, everybody, I got a number of texts and calls.

00:06:48.000 Are you okay?

00:06:49.000 Poso called right away.

00:06:50.000 Tyler Boyer called right away.

00:06:52.000 And I just, you know, my phone was blown up.

00:06:54.000 But, you know, here's the thing I'm okay.

00:06:57.000 My concern in the moment was just for Erica, for Mikey, others, you know, and, you know, just to see the way that the reaction, Has been from this moment.

00:07:08.000 And we're going to get into the details.

00:07:09.000 We're going to get into the Secret Service, the perimeter.

00:07:11.000 We have Susan Crabtree joining us next.

00:07:13.000 We've got a great show in store for you.

00:07:15.000 But my reaction is just a shock and horror that people are alleging that Erica's reaction was somehow performative.

00:07:25.000 Up yours.

00:07:26.000 Up yours.

00:07:26.000 For those people.

00:07:27.000 That's disgusting.

00:07:28.000 Secondly, that this was staged to get sympathy for Trump or even for Erica or Turning Point.

00:07:33.000 Up yours. 0.99

00:07:33.000 Screw you. 0.99

00:07:34.000 This is actually a good test. 0.98

00:07:35.000 Like, if you are a person where it is reasonable to you.

00:07:40.000 That assassination attempts are faked, are staged.

00:07:44.000 Just stop opining on public events because your brain is too cooked by television, by movies, by memes you read on the internet to think rationally about things.

00:07:56.000 Listen, period.

00:07:57.000 Yeah, I understand COVID.

00:07:59.000 That was a whole like op.

00:08:01.000 I get it.

00:08:02.000 The Russia hoax.

00:08:03.000 Op.

00:08:04.000 I get there's reasons to be distrustful and to hold elected leaders' feet to the fire.

00:08:09.000 I'm all on board with that. 1.00

00:08:10.000 But for real, if you are going to assume that everything is the freaking Jews. 0.99

00:08:15.000 Or everything is some stage 5D chess move, and that leftists don't want you dead. 0.98

00:08:20.000 I've got about 48 minutes of clips loaded up today to prove you wrong, to prove that you are missing the big E on the eye chart.

00:08:28.000 And I said it before, but I'll say it again. 0.87

00:08:30.000 When Charlie was with us, he was not afraid of the Jews, he was afraid of purple haired jihadists that wanted him dead, he was afraid of trannies, he was afraid of wild, violent assassination culture that's running amok on the left. 0.99

00:08:45.000 And if you can't get it through your freaking head yet, I have nothing for you. 0.99

00:08:49.000 To Blake's point, get off the internet. 0.99

00:08:51.000 You are cooked. 1.00

00:08:52.000 Your brain is toast. 1.00

00:08:55.000 Wake up. 1.00

00:08:57.000 We have put up with deranged leftist politicians going to no kings rallies where they're holding signs saying, kill all tyrants. 1.00

00:09:05.000 They all must die. 1.00

00:09:06.000 We have Hassan Piker saying, blood in the streets. 1.00

00:09:08.000 We have Destiny saying, conservatives should be terrified of being in public. 0.99

00:09:13.000 As people were walking out of this event, they passed people with signs that said, kill all of them, death to tyrants. 1.00

00:09:19.000 Death to tyrants. 0.96

00:09:19.000 And those people knew what had happened and they'd either Made those signs in response to what happened, or they decided to waive them anyway. 0.96

00:09:27.000 That is the kind of people you are dealing with.

00:09:29.000 And we've been putting up with it in this country like it's nothing.

00:09:32.000 Like this is just the new normal.

00:09:34.000 It can't be. 1.00

00:09:35.000 They want you dead.

00:09:36.000 I mean, not all of them, sure. 0.98

00:09:39.000 But then the ones that don't, they create the permission structure by turning the other cheek, looking away, not acknowledging just how vile and disgusting the activist base of the left has gotten.

00:09:50.000 And guess what?

00:09:51.000 The politicians, the Democrats aren't going to say anything because guess what?

00:09:53.000 They'll get.

00:09:54.000 Primary if they do.

00:09:55.000 They know that. 1.00

00:09:57.000 So they stay quiet and they blame Trump like cowards. 0.98

00:10:01.000 So who was this guy? 0.98

00:10:02.000 Cole Allen.

00:10:04.000 Real peach of an individual.

00:10:07.000 Well, he was a teacher from California, donated to Kamala Harris. 0.74

00:10:12.000 He was a member of a group called the White Awakes. 0.98

00:10:15.000 Ooh, that's an interesting one. 1.00

00:10:16.000 Yeah.

00:10:17.000 Attended a No Kings protest.

00:10:19.000 Rabid leftist poster on Blue Sky who liked to interact with Will Stancil there.

00:10:24.000 He wrote an anti Trump manifesto.

00:10:27.000 And we can, we're gonna, Blake's gonna go through some of that.

00:10:29.000 It's, it's interesting.

00:10:32.000 So, I honestly, I find the character of this Cole guy a little troubling just in the sense that he doesn't have the biography you might often expect from a presidential assassin.

00:10:44.000 He's not a, you know, a 19, 20 year old.

00:10:48.000 No, he's indiscernible from Ana Navarro on CNN.

00:10:51.000 He's a guy, he has a job, had a job, seemed obviously like radical, but he's not this non functional type who, You know, everyone said, Oh, this guy was going to totally go off the deep end and kill people.

00:11:02.000 He's like much more just a rabid left winger who let his brain get cooked too hard.

00:11:07.000 And you can see that when you read his manifesto, as a lot of people have pointed out, it's not some 200 page Unabomber thing rambling about society.

00:11:16.000 It's like he's written it as a Reddit post.

00:11:19.000 It's a Reddit post.

00:11:19.000 Literally, like, Hello, everybody.

00:11:21.000 I may have given a lot of people a surprise today.

00:11:23.000 Let me start off by apologizing to everyone whose trust I abused.

00:11:27.000 Goes on a bit.

00:11:28.000 It's like, Why did I do any of this?

00:11:31.000 I am a citizen of the United States. 0.96

00:11:32.000 What my representatives do reflects on me, and I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes. 0.89

00:11:41.000 And he goes on, talks about who's a target, who isn't. 0.81

00:11:46.000 At the end, he responds to rebuttals.

00:11:49.000 So, including one, let's see, objection four. 0.88

00:11:52.000 As a half black, half white person, you shouldn't be the one doing this. 0.63

00:11:56.000 Rebuttal I don't see anyone else picking up the slack.

00:12:00.000 So, he's marinating in weird race politics stuff.

00:12:04.000 He's totally cooked by basically Epstein style stuff. 1.00

00:12:08.000 Oh, the president's a pedophile. 1.00

00:12:09.000 Like, completely ludicrous. 1.00

00:12:10.000 He's really, really upset about Ukraine. 0.90

00:12:13.000 That's another thing that we saw through some of his social media posts.

00:12:16.000 He's very upset at JD being proud that we've stopped just giving a Blake check to Ukraine.

00:12:21.000 Yeah, and he signs off Cold Force, like it's a username or a video game name, your friendly federal assassin, Alan.

00:12:29.000 Check this out.

00:12:29.000 Rob Henderson put out a tweet.

00:12:31.000 Rob's been a guest on the show a couple times.

00:12:33.000 He basically says, relative to Americans with a high school education, Americans with graduate degrees are twice as likely to support political violence.

00:12:41.000 Throw that up, please.

00:12:43.000 And you see, More education equals more support for political violence.

00:12:47.000 It couldn't be otherwise.

00:12:50.000 You guys have that graphic. 0.96

00:12:52.000 And here, let's just make sure the visual gets up.

00:12:56.000 So the point is, you know, this guy was a Caltech grad.

00:13:00.000 He was, some people call him a genius.

00:13:01.000 I'm not convinced he was a genius. 1.00

00:13:03.000 But he was a sick person, as Trump said. 1.00

00:13:06.000 He's an absolute sick person who was highly educated beyond his intelligence, beyond his wisdom. 1.00

00:13:10.000 He was a Christian. 1.00

00:13:11.000 Now he's very anti Christian.

00:13:13.000 So that's probably, you know, you think of the Bible verse, it's like, you know, when the.

00:13:17.000 The house is cleared.

00:13:18.000 The demons go scouring looking for another host.

00:13:20.000 They come back with more friends.

00:13:22.000 This guy might have been demonized.

00:13:24.000 We are in a spiritual battle.

00:13:26.000 So I don't know what his story is, but that's, you know, it was amazing that he just ran through the security perimeter and was ultimately subdued right there.

00:13:35.000 Somehow came out alive.

00:13:37.000 He was running like a bat out of hell. 0.99

00:13:39.000 And so, you know, there's the video right there.

00:13:42.000 But this is, I think, one of the more troubling aspects of this whole story is how indiscernible this person is from.

00:13:49.000 Will Stancil, who he interacts with online, from Ana Navarro on CNN, from the Lincoln Project guys.

00:13:59.000 I mean, this guy is indiscernible from mainstream platformed Democrats.

00:14:05.000 I mean, and this is the other thing I'd say we're going to play these clips because they're absolutely obscene, but let's not forget how they reacted when Charlie was killed.

00:14:18.000 Do not forget how vile this has become, this assassination.

00:14:21.000 It's gloating, gleeful.

00:14:25.000 Sick bile that they spew when somebody's life is taken, robbed.

00:14:31.000 Sot 25. 0.95

00:14:38.000 Charlie Kirk just got shot in the neck.

00:14:43.000 Charlie Kirk got shot and he's dead.

00:14:52.000 Ha ha ha ha.

00:14:55.000 Finally, finally, thank you.

00:14:57.000 Can we keep this shot right in the voice box?

00:15:00.000 I might be one percent less atheist today.

00:15:04.000 I don't care that he was a person, he wasn't to me. 0.92

00:15:07.000 He was a nonsense to me.

00:15:09.000 Do you get it yet? 0.67

00:15:11.000 Do you get what we've been putting up with?

00:15:13.000 This is if you're on a certain brand of the political left, that is what you can marinate in every day.

00:15:20.000 There's endless stuff after this where people are saying, Oh, you know, too bad they didn't get Trump.

00:15:26.000 They've said that after every single attempt on Trump.

00:15:29.000 If that assassin had succeeded and killed the president, what they saw, what we saw with Charlie, 100 times over, 1,000 times over, around the entire world.

00:15:40.000 And I don't think knowing that that would happen, it's very difficult to walk back and have some of these people who are justifying the rhetoric of assassinations all the time say, actually, we oppose political violence.

00:15:54.000 Very often, the left does not oppose political violence.

00:15:57.000 We know that because within the past few years, they have openly embraced political violence at times.

00:16:03.000 That's what 2020 was.

00:16:04.000 Look at this.

00:16:05.000 This is Hassan Piker, who we talked about recently on the show, talking about somebody's got to do it.

00:16:10.000 Sot 19.

00:16:12.000 And you actually wrote about this, and it was a great video where you talked about, you know, someone has to do it.

00:16:21.000 See, when I say that, everyone knows exactly what I mean.

00:16:25.000 Which is, I think that shows that there is a lot of anger, a lot of resentment, and untapped potential, untapped revolutionary potential, as a matter of fact.

00:16:36.000 Okay, untapped revolutionary.

00:16:38.000 Okay, so just to be clear what Hassan Piker is, this is a guy that the New York Times.

00:16:43.000 Just did a whole podcast with, like it's nothing.

00:16:45.000 Not even just a podcast with, there's extensive discourse on the left.

00:16:48.000 Like, should we embrace Hassan Piker?

00:16:51.000 And a lot of them are saying, yes, this is how we get our left wing Joe Rogan we have to embrace Hassan Piker.

00:16:56.000 We have to embrace this guy who's going to say, sometimes murder, they were socially murdering.

00:17:03.000 It's really self defense to assassinate somebody.

00:17:05.000 Sometimes robbery, looting.

00:17:07.000 You know, I can defend that too.

00:17:09.000 But never mind. 1.00

00:17:10.000 It's probably just the Jews. 1.00

00:17:12.000 It's probably just the Jews. 1.00

00:17:14.000 That's who did it. 1.00

00:17:15.000 Like, if you go online, that's probably who did it.

00:17:18.000 It's just a big massage up just to get sympathy.

00:17:23.000 Pretty sick stuff.

00:17:26.000 I don't even know where to begin with some of you. 0.92

00:17:31.000 It's that obscene now.

00:17:33.000 We're going to turn our attention to the security situation around the event.

00:17:37.000 There's been a lot of discussion about whether it was secure enough.

00:17:40.000 Should, you know, this was a, this Colon guy, he was a guest at the hotel.

00:17:43.000 I've stayed at that hotel a number of times.

00:17:45.000 You all have stayed at hotels, I'm sure.

00:17:47.000 You, Do not get your bags swept, checked, dog sniffer, none of that.

00:17:52.000 There's no magnetometers when you enter a hotel room.

00:17:55.000 Should there have been?

00:17:56.000 Should the perimeter have gone outside and beyond where it was?

00:18:00.000 But there's a, you know, Charlie actually had tweeted about the Secret Service having a massive morale problem during the Biden years that a lot of people were retiring, fleeing, and how big of an issue that was when you had so much violence aimed and directed at President Trump.

00:18:18.000 We saw that at Butler.

00:18:19.000 We saw it at the golf course in Florida.

00:18:22.000 Now we see it at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

00:18:25.000 And we see it in other places, candidly.

00:18:27.000 There was a guy that we forget who tried to attack Mar a Lago, right?

00:18:32.000 So there have been multiple instances of this and then multiple other instances of political violence.

00:18:37.000 You need the Secret Service to be absolutely on point.

00:18:41.000 And, Blake, I'd be curious about your perspective just not having been there.

00:18:45.000 I have my own from.

00:18:46.000 Well, it is interesting.

00:18:47.000 As you said, so for those who don't know, a lot of the debate is.

00:18:51.000 As he said, was the security strong enough?

00:18:53.000 Because in some sense, it was.

00:18:55.000 The Secret Service can't prevent someone from attempting to break through.

00:18:58.000 And in this case, he did fail within seconds.

00:19:01.000 And that's a good thing.

00:19:02.000 The debate was was he too close?

00:19:04.000 Was the president in too much danger?

00:19:06.000 And a lot of people said, well, the whole hotel should have been within the Secret Service perimeter.

00:19:11.000 But I think what we saw might have vindicated their strategy.

00:19:14.000 Because think about if their perimeter was the entire hotel, then they do have to search every single guest who checks in that hotel in advance.

00:19:23.000 They have to search every single room to make sure it's secure in a place with hundreds of rooms.

00:19:27.000 He wrote about it.

00:19:28.000 That's difficult.

00:19:29.000 Yeah, he wrote about it in his manifesto.

00:19:30.000 He was mocking how easy it was for him to get into the hotel, assemble the weapon there, and that, you know, he basically said, I could have brought a bomb in there and, you know, it would have been, they didn't even care.

00:19:41.000 But the thing is, he wasn't inside the perimeter.

00:19:41.000 Precisely.

00:19:44.000 And so he attempted to reach the ballroom and immediately failed and didn't even get on my understanding, it didn't even get to the same floor the president was on.

00:19:51.000 We do have, yeah.

00:19:53.000 Excuse me. 0.99

00:19:54.000 We do have Susan Crabtree ready now. 1.00

00:19:55.000 Susan, welcome back to the show.

00:19:58.000 There's a lot of debate about the success or, I don't know, the failure of the Secret Service.

00:20:06.000 There was a sense of, in retrospect, that it was a lack of security in that perimeter.

00:20:12.000 I will say, it did seem a little bit lax.

00:20:15.000 But to Blake's point, the guy didn't get, he didn't really breach the perimeter per se.

00:20:19.000 It was on the floor above.

00:20:21.000 He breached it momentarily before they subdued him.

00:20:23.000 He ran right through it.

00:20:25.000 What are people saying that you're interviewing?

00:20:27.000 I know you're talking to all the sources right now.

00:20:29.000 Yes, they're flooding me with information.

00:20:32.000 But yes, I honestly, I always say that these.

00:20:36.000 Agents acted heroically.

00:20:39.000 They subdued and they interdicted this terrible madman guy.

00:20:45.000 And so they deserve praise for that.

00:20:48.000 But the larger plan, I don't, I think it's similar to Butler.

00:20:52.000 These Secret Service agents, rank and file Secret Service agents and officers were set up to fail.

00:20:59.000 They didn't fail.

00:21:01.000 It was lucky.

00:21:02.000 Honestly, to me, from my sources, There are many of them that inundate me after things like this happen.

00:21:10.000 And they are saying that this is just an epic failure.

00:21:14.000 They were using the 2023 Biden model on President Trump.

00:21:19.000 It's similar to what happened during Butler, they treated Donald Trump like a former president, like President Obama or Jimmy Carter, not someone who broke the mold when it comes to threats against him and having outdoor rallies with tens of thousands of people.

00:21:38.000 In this case, they did not treat the Secret Service as a special national security event like the State of the Union or inauguration, despite the fact that there were so many cabinet members there.

00:21:51.000 And, you know, I have covered the Secret Service's problems.

00:21:54.000 I've been warning about this for months and months.

00:21:57.000 It seems like it takes one of these events for Washington to focus on what's going on with the Secret Service.

00:22:05.000 I don't believe that Sean Curran is the change agent.

00:22:09.000 Dan Bongino also warned about that when he was chosen and before he was chosen that the Secret Service needs to reform what the mess it was under the Biden administration and for many, many years before that.

00:22:22.000 So, Susan, what are the specific shortcomings they're pointing to in terms of design?

00:22:28.000 Is it just the perimeter was too small?

00:22:31.000 Is it that the agents, there weren't enough agents there in general?

00:22:35.000 What are the sort of changes that we might expect as a result of this?

00:22:39.000 This is one of the last lines of defense, you know, that magnometer checkpoint.

00:22:44.000 That should not have been where you put the, where you're interdicting somebody like this.

00:22:51.000 The stairwell was completely unsecured that he ran down.

00:22:56.000 The hotel is probably not a proper venue anymore for someone like Donald Trump and his cabinet.

00:23:03.000 The, you cannot, unless you are willing to have the hotel only accept vetted guests who are affiliated with the secret, with the event.

00:23:16.000 The Secret Service has a chance to look at their backgrounds.

00:23:19.000 Or you could have, in other countries, they do this.

00:23:22.000 You have checks days prior to people checking into the hotel, their luggage got checked.

00:23:28.000 There were reports that reporters were checking into the hotel at 3 p.m. that day, and their luggage never was checked whatsoever.

00:23:37.000 They weren't even checked for their ID versus their ticket, and their ticket.

00:23:41.000 Tickets were being flashed.

00:23:42.000 I don't know.

00:23:43.000 You've been to this event many times.

00:23:44.000 I've been to this event dating back to the 90s.

00:23:47.000 It's always a soft target, in my estimation.

00:23:50.000 And so, why did that not get hardened?

00:23:53.000 They used the old model, and that's not appropriate right now.

00:23:57.000 It's the same problem that happened at Butler.

00:24:01.000 Yeah, I think you're right.

00:24:03.000 You know, it's interesting.

00:24:04.000 There were a bunch of accusations going around on social media, and I was one of the people that was accused.

00:24:09.000 I tweeted immediately after, like, this is why we need the White House ballroom.

00:24:13.000 And there were accusations that it was coordinated or something.

00:24:16.000 No, it's just an obvious thought that popped in my head when you have President Trump.

00:24:20.000 You talk about the old model versus the new model.

00:24:22.000 I don't know that there will be a president that fits into the old model ever again.

00:24:27.000 I don't know if we're living in a brave new world and it's just a new reality.

00:24:30.000 So my thought was.

00:24:32.000 At least at the White House, you don't have guests staying in the hotel that could have, you know, packed in a bomb or packed in a, like a long rifle or shotgun or knives like they did.

00:24:42.000 And I think at the very least, if you know that somebody's going to be staying in, in that hotel when President Trump is going to be there, not to mention all the cabinets, the line of succession.

00:24:50.000 I mean, there was JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Scott Besant.

00:24:54.000 There was, I mean, Speaker Johnson.

00:24:56.000 I mean, there was the room was packed with the who's who.

00:24:59.000 And so, yeah, it is a huge vulnerable target.

00:25:02.000 Um, And I would say the security, you didn't get checked until you got really close in to that ballroom.

00:25:11.000 So, yeah, obviously the model has to change.

00:25:14.000 You reported, Susan, that Susie Wiles has been overseeing the Secret Service kind of as part of her portfolio.

00:25:21.000 And they're standing by the work of the Secret Service, but they did call a meeting of some sorts.

00:25:26.000 What can you report on that?

00:25:27.000 Yes, they called a meeting to go review protocols, exactly what we're talking about.

00:25:32.000 They have to say that the Secret Service did a great job.

00:25:36.000 I know there were men and women that acted heroically, and I applaud them.

00:25:42.000 They prevented a greater tragedy, but it should have never got to this point.

00:25:48.000 They had cabinet secretaries and dignitaries and Erica under the tables fearing for their lives.

00:25:57.000 This is an embarrassment for the United States, and the Secret Service could have prevented this.

00:26:03.000 It was highly preventable, and moving the security outside would have been one step.

00:26:10.000 all the steps that I just outlined, even the magnometers, that checkpoint was being broken down and they were acting very idly.

00:26:19.000 They were not in a robust posture when that came in.

00:26:22.000 And I don't necessarily blame the agents, the rank and file agents and officers.

00:26:28.000 I blame the supervisors.

00:26:29.000 And it's the same thing at Butler.

00:26:32.000 There were two supervisors that signed off on that security report, that plan, without anyone covering the AGR building.

00:26:40.000 And those Those supervisors got promotions, and one of them is in charge of the Office of Professional Responsibility, which is in charge of disciplining other agents.

00:26:51.000 That is ridiculous when they did not notify and tell the officer this woman who was inexperienced. 0.98

00:27:00.000 Congress found that she was inexperienced.

00:27:02.000 Her name is Mio Perez, who was in charge of Butler.

00:27:06.000 Now we're having a similar problem take place.

00:27:11.000 agents and officers sitting idly there.

00:27:14.000 They reacted quickly, thank goodness, because of their training and the training they go through is so extensive and they put their lives on the line and they did so that night.

00:27:25.000 Thank them.

00:27:26.000 I'm so thankful to them.

00:27:28.000 Our continuity of government thanks them.

00:27:30.000 We, I'm just, but it should have never gotten to that point.

00:27:34.000 It's the planning.

00:27:35.000 It's the planning.

00:27:36.000 You're right.

00:27:36.000 Because, I mean, I was in the room and I felt the urgency of those Secret Service agents.

00:27:41.000 I remember thinking, don't do it.

00:27:42.000 Don't move quickly.

00:27:43.000 I don't want them to think I'm a threat or something like that.

00:27:45.000 I remember being, that was one of the biggest points of fear for me is like, just stay low.

00:27:50.000 Don't make any sudden movements.

00:27:52.000 Because you could feel the intensity that those men were climbing over the chairs and climbing up onto the stage.

00:27:59.000 I mean, it was a very, There was a lot of just energy coming from them, and I call it like violent urgency.

00:28:07.000 You could feel that they meant business in that moment, so I totally am grateful for them.

00:28:10.000 Blake brought up an interesting point here, Susan.

00:28:13.000 So, you know, a lot of people think, Oh, Secret Service is guarding the event, we're all safe.

00:28:17.000 Well, when we all exited that venue, what's to say there wasn't, if he wasn't a lone wolf, lone gunman, what's to say we wouldn't have exited that venue and all of a sudden there's, you know, somebody perched up high and it just takes out all the elites?

00:28:30.000 Yeah, so, yeah, so President Trump.

00:28:32.000 The cabinet, they entered and left through a different way, secured by the Secret Service.

00:28:36.000 But everyone else was sort of just funneling out in a narrow line. 1.00

00:28:39.000 That's where they were passing those people with the signs that said, kill them all, death to tyrants. 0.99

00:28:44.000 Imagine if one of those people had an AR 15 instead and started spraying into that crowd. 1.00

00:28:49.000 They could have killed a huge number of people.

00:28:52.000 And I think that's a lot of the security discourse is sort of all the normal people, still noteworthy individuals, all of them, realizing that they were basically unprotected at this.

00:29:02.000 Yeah.

00:29:03.000 And it's a good point because if you go to Blue Sky, which this Shooter was very active on Blue Sky, which is basically a breeding ground for domestic terrorists at this point.

00:29:13.000 They hate elites.

00:29:14.000 So you got Taylor Lorenz, who's kind of a despicable person herself and was fangirling over Luigi Mangione. 1.00

00:29:21.000 She's getting canceled on Blue Sky because she's an elite. 1.00

00:29:25.000 She was going to a fascist party and they don't care.

00:29:28.000 Once they castigate you as the elite, as part of the class that is totally fair game, she's getting canceled on Blue Sky.

00:29:37.000 So, what's to say that, you know, Nora O'Donnell and all these people that I saw walking around weren't fair game as we were funneling out of the venue?

00:29:45.000 I mean, this is the assassination culture that they're creating, that they can be this martyr for the cause and affect change.

00:29:54.000 You know, the point is, I mean, you have a lot of thoughts on the security situation here, Susan, I know, but the point is we have a deeper problem, which is why the model needs to get updated because things are simply less safe.

00:30:08.000 Absolutely.

00:30:10.000 I don't think that you can have a situation.

00:30:14.000 Trump broke the mold, okay?

00:30:16.000 He is, he just is facing so many more threats.

00:30:21.000 And it's ridiculous to use the Biden model from 2023 at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and think that that is going to not be permeated.

00:30:33.000 This is a porous security system that was put in place last night.

00:30:38.000 It's been the same model that I've gone to.

00:30:41.000 Since the 90s at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, I'm going to date myself.

00:30:46.000 Speaker Livingston, I remember going back.

00:30:50.000 I've gone so many times.

00:30:51.000 I remember talking about this with my husband, who is a former Navy officer.

00:30:57.000 And he has said, We are soft targets at this.

00:31:00.000 You're sitting there with celebrities.

00:31:04.000 I remember sitting there with a celebrity from Homeland.

00:31:08.000 She said, I can't believe we're exposed like this.

00:31:10.000 We're just standing in line.

00:31:12.000 And they didn't do anything.

00:31:14.000 Different.

00:31:15.000 And I'll tell you one thing.

00:31:17.000 The senior executive service, that is the upper management of the Secret Service.

00:31:24.000 Sean Curran did not actually use someone who had that kind of accreditation to be the special agent in charge of the protective division, the presidential protective division.

00:31:40.000 That's a change.

00:31:42.000 And one of my sources brought that to my attention in the last 24 hours.

00:31:46.000 He too, Sean Kern, didn't have that accreditation because he was a former, they treated him as working for a former president, even though this is an unusual situation where President Trump was a former president running for president again.

00:32:05.000 This is just, I mean, honestly, I have some exclusive reporting to share with you.

00:32:13.000 Susie Wiles, I'm told, was overseeing the Secret Service, the Chief of Staff, the White House Chief of Staff.

00:32:19.000 And she was pushing back.

00:32:21.000 There were several incidents that I reported on.

00:32:23.000 The chief counsel was handpicked by Sean Curran.

00:32:27.000 He got into a road rage incident and was impersonating a Secret Service officer.

00:32:31.000 So he was forced to resign.

00:32:34.000 The DH, Christy Nome, wanted to put a political chief counsel in place to sort of initiate some of these reforms.

00:32:44.000 I'm told the White House would not approve of that.

00:32:47.000 Susie Wiles would not approve of that.

00:32:49.000 They had a Deputy Chief of Staff from DHS go over to the Secret Service to share recommendations for reform.

00:32:58.000 And I'm told that Sean Curran called over to Susie Wiles and Susie Wiles said no and had him walked out of the building.

00:33:07.000 Now, I went to the White House today and shared these findings with her from these sources and they gave me a statement and I'll read it to you.

00:33:17.000 Let me be clear, this is from Caroline Levitt.

00:33:20.000 Let me be clear, nobody cares more or has pushed harder or has asked more hard questions.

00:33:25.000 About President Trump's safety than Susie Wiles.

00:33:27.000 The insinuation that Susie would object to anything that would help strengthen protection for her boss and friend is absolutely absurd.

00:33:36.000 But they did not address my questions about whether she had this deputy chief of staff at DHS walked out of the building for trying to share reforms with the Secret Service and oversee some reforms.

00:33:50.000 That's troubling.

00:33:53.000 Yeah.

00:33:53.000 I mean, you know, both things can be true, right?

00:33:57.000 Susie Wiles does care deeply about his safety and protection, and that ultimately something else could be going on behind the scenes, you know, that we're unaware of what would explain those actions.

00:34:10.000 It's great reporting, Susan.

00:34:11.000 Thank you for sharing that.

00:34:13.000 You said brand new exclusive reporting that you just got?

00:34:16.000 Okay.

00:34:17.000 Well, that's fascinating.

00:34:20.000 Yeah.

00:34:21.000 I don't know what to make of that, actually.

00:34:23.000 I don't know if, Blake, you have thoughts here, but it's troubling because there are obviously reforms that need to be implemented.

00:34:30.000 Wider perimeter checks, multi levels of security.

00:34:34.000 And you made a good point earlier, Susan, where you said they have to say that the security was stood up and that they did their job heroically and all that stuff.

00:34:43.000 And they did.

00:34:45.000 But from a planning perspective and from a leadership perspective, like I said, Charlie was tweeting about the morale issues.

00:34:52.000 I'm curious if we're still experiencing those, if that's still part of the storyline of the U.S. Secret Service now, well into Trump's second year here.

00:35:01.000 Is the Secret Service morale being cleared up?

00:35:03.000 Is some of the hiring issues?

00:35:04.000 Been cleared up.

00:35:06.000 I see you shaking your head.

00:35:06.000 Absolutely not.

00:35:07.000 Absolutely not.

00:35:08.000 That is a critical issue.

00:35:11.000 Andrew, you just nailed it.

00:35:14.000 The Secret Service is having severe hiring issues.

00:35:17.000 Rich Darapoli, who is a former Secret Service agent, covered four presidents.

00:35:22.000 He wrote an op ed.

00:35:23.000 He's a source of mine.

00:35:25.000 He wrote an op ed in the Fox News just last week about this very issue that the hiring standards have been severely lowered because there's a brain drain, there's a talent drain in the Secret Service that's been going on for quite some time because morale issues have been plaguing the Secret Service for years, but they were exacerbated during the Biden administration.

00:35:45.000 When Biden had a DEI mandate in place saying that you will hire more women and you will hire more minorities.

00:35:52.000 That hasn't been fixed yet, huh?

00:35:54.000 Absolutely not.

00:35:55.000 That's one thing I've been reported on repeatedly.

00:35:59.000 There was so many different people.

00:36:01.000 Yeah, we've got to wrap up this hour, but that's troubling.

00:36:05.000 As you learn more, I want to have you back on to give us updates here because the eyes of the nation and the world are on this now.

00:36:11.000 Susan Crabtree, Real Clear Politics, thank you so much.

00:36:13.000 Thanks for having me.

00:36:17.000 Charlie had an Absolutely relentless passion for learning.

00:36:20.000 I saw it up close and personal in every waking moment, every spare moment that he could.

00:36:27.000 He had a book open, he had a podcast open, he had a Hillsdale online course open.

00:36:33.000 He was always diving into new ideas, absorbing information, studying up, and sharpening his skills.

00:36:38.000 That's why I love Dr. Arne at Hillsdale College.

00:36:41.000 They shared a deep understanding that learning is the key to shaping your character, creating courage, and changing lives.

00:36:49.000 Charlie never stopped learning, and neither should you.

00:36:51.000 Through Hillsdale's online courses, he spent time studying the classics, the American founding, and the enduring truths of the Bible.

00:36:58.000 Now it is your turn.

00:37:01.000 With Hillsdale's free online courses, you can follow in his footsteps, learning from real professors and challenging yourself with rigorous coursework that's free and accessible to anybody who's willing to learn.

00:37:12.000 A great place to start is their brand new course on logic and rhetoric.

00:37:16.000 Learn from Hillsdale professors how to speak masterfully, make a powerful point, and see how clear thinking leads to better decision making and more effective speech.

00:37:25.000 Don't wait.

00:37:26.000 Go to charlieforhillsdale.com to enroll today.

00:37:29.000 It's completely free.

00:37:30.000 This is a real good one, by the way Logic and Rhetoric.

00:37:33.000 Pick up the mic, carry it forward, learn like Charlie.

00:37:37.000 Start right now at charlieforhillsdale.com.

00:37:42.000 We have Oren McIntyre on standby.

00:37:44.000 Oren, welcome back to the show, my friend.

00:37:46.000 We just, this Caroline Levitt press conference has just started.

00:37:50.000 We're going to throw to it just to see what her statement is at the top.

00:37:53.000 We'll bring you back.

00:37:54.000 Hang right there, okay, Oren?

00:37:56.000 One second.

00:37:57.000 Let's hear what Caroline has to say.

00:38:00.000 As I told many of you on Friday afternoon, I thought that would be my last time taking your questions until after my maternity leave.

00:38:07.000 But given the attempted assassination of the President and, quote, top Trump administration officials, as the depraved shooter noted in his manifesto at the White House Correspondents Association dinner on Saturday evening, I felt it was prudent to be here today to answer your questions and inform the American people about how the administration is responding to yet another attempt on President Trump's life.

00:38:32.000 Saturday was supposed to be a joyful evening celebrating free speech and the First Amendment with all of you, members of the press.

00:38:39.000 Instead, the night was hijacked by a crazed anti Trump individual who traveled across the country to assassinate the president and as many administration officials as possible.

00:38:52.000 This is the third major assassination attempt against President Trump in two years.

00:38:57.000 No other president in history has faced such repeated, serious attempts on his life.

00:39:03.000 First and foremost, the president.

00:39:05.000 The First Lady, and everyone in this White House are extraordinarily grateful to the brave law enforcement professionals who sprang into action to apprehend the would be assassin and keep all of us safe.

00:39:17.000 The President would especially like to express his gratitude to the men and women of the United States Secret Service who acted with the utmost professionalism, courage, and sense of duty.

00:39:29.000 This includes the heroic agent who took a bullet to the chest.

00:39:32.000 Thankfully, he was saved by his bulletproof vest.

00:39:36.000 Minutes after returning here to the White House to the Oval Office, despite fighting Secret Service to try to stay and keep the dinner going on Saturday, ahead of addressing you here in the briefing room, President Trump was intent on speaking to this brave agent to ensure he was okay.

00:39:52.000 And the agent assured the President that he was.

00:39:55.000 As you know, I was seated next to President Trump and the First Lady when the shots were fired before Secret Service swiftly moved us to safety backstage.

00:40:03.000 The President's calm in the face of chaos, while yet another individual was trying to take his life.

00:40:09.000 Was really remarkable to witness, and it's something I will never forget.

00:40:14.000 President Trump is fearless because he loves this country, and he is willing to put his own life on the line to deliver on the promises that he made to the American public who elected him here into the highest office in the land.

00:40:28.000 And while we are blessed to have a fearless president, we should not live in a country where such constant fear of political violence permeates our society every single day.

00:40:39.000 We can and we should have fierce disagreement in this country.

00:40:43.000 As you all know, we disagree often, myself in this role and all of you in the news media.

00:40:48.000 But those disagreements must remain peaceful.

00:40:51.000 Debating, peaceful protesting, and voting are how we need to settle disagreements, not bullets.

00:40:58.000 Nobody in recent years has faced more bullets and more violence than President Trump.

00:41:03.000 This political violence stems from a systemic demonization of him and his supporters by commentators, yes, by elected members of the Democrat Party, and even some in the media.

00:41:15.000 This hateful, inconstant, and violent rhetoric directed at President Trump day after day after day for 11 years has helped legitimize this violence and bring us to this dark moment.

00:41:28.000 Those who constantly falsely label and slander the president as a fascist, as a threat to democracy, and compare him to Hitler to score political points are fueling this kind of violence.

00:41:40.000 The left wing cult of hatred against the president and all of those who support him and work for him has gotten multiple people hurt and killed.

00:41:49.000 And it almost did so again this weekend.

00:41:53.000 When you read the manifesto of this shooter, ask yourselves how different is the rhetoric from this almost assassin than what you read on social media and hear in various forums every single day?

00:42:05.000 The answer, if you're being honest with yourself, is that there is no difference at all.

00:42:10.000 Much of the manifesto of the would be assassin is indistinguishable from the words that we hear daily from so many.

00:42:18.000 For example, as the First Lady of the United States pointed out this morning, just two days.

00:42:23.000 Prior to the shooting, ABC's late night host Jimmy Kimmel disgustingly called First Lady Melania Trump an expectant widow. 0.94

00:42:31.000 Who in their right minds says a wife would be glowing over the potential murder of her beloved husband?

00:42:37.000 And having experienced what I did with the First Lady on Saturday night, I can tell you that she was anything but that.

00:42:43.000 This kind of rhetoric about the President, the First Lady, and his supporters is completely deranged, and it's unbelievable that the American people are consuming it night after night after night.

00:42:54.000 As President Trump said on Saturday night at this podium, we as Americans must recommit ourselves to resolving our differences peacefully and uniting around the shared values that make our country great.

00:43:06.000 The deranged lies and smears against the president, his family, his supporters have led crazy people to believe crazy things, and they are inspired to commit violence because of those words.

00:43:18.000 It has to stop.

00:43:19.000 And one more point Saturday night served as yet another reminder of how important it is to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

00:43:27.000 It is shameful that the United States Congress has kept this vital agency defunded for 73 days, the longest shutdown of a federal agency in U.S. history.

00:43:39.000 The Secret Service is a vital component of DHS.

00:43:42.000 It has been directly impacted by this reckless political gamesmanship.

00:43:47.000 Everyone in this room who was there on Saturday night witnessed the heroes of Secret Service and federal law enforcement jump into action in the face of grave danger and uncertainty.

00:43:57.000 Agents put their own lives in harm's way to protect the president.

00:44:01.000 The First Lady, the Vice President, and members of the Cabinet.

00:44:05.000 One agent can be seen in video footage literally jumping onto the stage, not knowing where the attacker was or where the bullets were coming from at that point, to place his body in front of the President of the United States.

00:44:18.000 These men and women are heroes.

00:44:20.000 They perform their duties daily, and they have children and families too.

00:44:24.000 And they do it despite the political turmoil surrounding their agency.

00:44:28.000 Make no mistake, this defunding of DHS should be a national scandal.

00:44:33.000 If Republicans defunded DHS and we saw in another attempted assassination on a Democrat president, I would hope that the media coverage would be relentless and unforgiving, and I hope that it continues to be now.

00:44:46.000 With the World Cup, America 250, the 2028 Olympics, and a presidential election all ahead, the Democrats' obstruction is placing an enormous and totally pointless burden on the Secret Service that can get more people killed.

00:45:00.000 Enough is enough.

00:45:02.000 There should be no further debate about this.

00:45:04.000 Democrats need to do what President Trump has been calling on them to do for 73 days in a row and fund the Department of Homeland Security, period.

00:45:13.000 This is a national emergency, and every member of Congress needs to put their country over party and get the Department of Homeland Security funded.

00:45:22.000 With that, I will take a few of your questions today.

00:45:25.000 So, powerful statements from Caroline Levitt, but I'm still kind of left wondering like, action.

00:45:31.000 If this is urgent in a national emergency, then where's the action?

00:45:35.000 Oren McIntyre joins us.

00:45:37.000 He's from Blaze TV.

00:45:38.000 He's got a great show, great follow on X, great thinker.

00:45:41.000 Oren, you and I were texting.

00:45:43.000 I mean, it just feels like this problem is something we've kicked down the road as a can.

00:45:47.000 We keep kicking down the road, and we're not dealing with an underlying issue of what we've allowed to be normalized.

00:45:53.000 And the longer we put it off, the more radical the solution becomes.

00:45:57.000 Your thoughts, Oren?

00:45:58.000 Yeah, I think this is obviously correct.

00:46:00.000 Donald Trump has received many different death threats and assassination attempts from very early on.

00:46:05.000 And of course, these have only accelerated with a level of permissiveness that we've seen.

00:46:10.000 Obviously, I don't need to tell anybody on the Charlie Kirk show about the horrific nature of left wing violence and the incredible cost that the right is incurring, that America is incurring because of what's going on.

00:46:22.000 It's great to talk about the need to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

00:46:27.000 It's good to say that we need to finish the ballroom to make sure that everyone is secure.

00:46:31.000 But as you say, all of this feels like we are not addressing an underlying issue.

00:46:35.000 Now, I will say, obviously, we just saw the Trump administration take its first big blow, I think, against.

00:46:41.000 The leftist NGO violence machine, the one that pushes the rhetoric that encourages attacks on people like Donald Trump or Charlie Kirk when they went after the SPLC.

00:46:52.000 I can't help but notice that just a few days after they take this definitive action for the first time, we see an assassination attempt.

00:47:00.000 I don't know if there's a direct connection, but it's very clear that the left is pretty used to having a free hand with the encouraging of violence and covering up that violence.

00:47:10.000 And so the fact that the Trump administration is finally putting pressure on organizations like the SPLC, making them pay some kind of real cost for this, is critical.

00:47:17.000 And I think we need to see a lot more of that as soon as possible.

00:47:21.000 Well, I mean, listen, you're talking about the mainstreaming of this stuff.

00:47:24.000 What Caroline said is absolutely right.

00:47:26.000 It is indistinguishable from the type of rhetoric this guy used on Blue Sky, from Anna Navarro, from any number, Hassan Piker, Destiny, all these people, when they talk about Trump, JB Pritzker just doubled down, Oren, talking about how it's actually just Trump who's the one who's been calling for political violence.

00:47:44.000 How many times, more times, do we need to be like the ones on the other side of an assassin's bullet or an assassination attempt before they own up to the fact that they're encouraging this amongst their own fault and whitewashing it? 0.98

00:47:56.000 Going to no kings rallies where the signs are held up saying, let's kill all tyrants.

00:48:00.000 Somebody's got to do it and acting like it's totally normal. 0.97

00:48:03.000 And they're just, oh, well, they're justified to be so upset, Oren.

00:48:06.000 They're just, they had it coming.

00:48:08.000 They shouldn't be such bad people if they don't want to get shot.

00:48:10.000 They have been normalizing this, and yet they keep saying it's both sides, both sides issue.

00:48:16.000 You got Obama going, you know, we got to tone down the, you know, no more political violence while we don't know what his motive was.

00:48:23.000 It's like, read the manifesto.

00:48:25.000 He was watching MSNBC.

00:48:27.000 Like MS Now, whatever you want to call it.

00:48:29.000 That's the motivation.

00:48:31.000 Like, what more do we need?

00:48:33.000 And this both sidesism, I'm so sick of it. 0.96

00:48:35.000 I don't want to hear another word about it.

00:48:37.000 Orin, your reaction.

00:48:38.000 No, it's absolutely insane.

00:48:40.000 But of course, the left can't admit any of this.

00:48:42.000 They've been using violence, unadulterated violence, for years.

00:48:46.000 Like, this is how the left operated in the 60s and the 70s.

00:48:49.000 If you look back at the anti war civil rights movement, we have the whole days of rage with the weather underground and the bombings that the left continuously used.

00:48:57.000 They were so violent that eventually Richard Nixon ran one of the most famous campaigns.

00:49:02.000 As in history, promising to tamp down on the rampant left wing terrorism that was running across the nation.

00:49:08.000 So, this is a long standing leftist tradition.

00:49:10.000 The left rely on this open ability to do violence on one side and expect no repercussions.

00:49:17.000 And if the right even hints at the possibility that they might in some way get kinetic, obviously we see what happened to protesters in January 6th.

00:49:25.000 The right has to start taking this seriously.

00:49:27.000 They have to crack down, they have to destroy the lives of people who want to murder the president, who encourage the murder of conservatives who are.

00:49:35.000 Output transcript Out there peddling violence as a solution to political problems.

00:49:39.000 Violence is an incredibly destabilizing element in any political system.

00:49:45.000 If you look at something like the Spanish Civil War and the lead up to that Spanish Civil War, it was an assassination after assassination of right wing figures that ultimately drove people like Francisco Franco into power.

00:49:58.000 People tell me that they're concerned about the possible rise of authoritarianism or the right wing starting to use power in some terrible way.

00:50:05.000 Well, the best way to head that off is to address issues like this now.

00:50:09.000 Because if you don't, if you allow the violence to build, if you allow things to continue to stabilize, people will look for someone who can return order and they will look for whoever will do it, however, they will get it done.

00:50:20.000 It's a powerful insight, Orrin.

00:50:22.000 I think you're right.

00:50:23.000 The fix becomes increasingly drastic and draconian if the left does not get their people into order, if they don't stop this incendiary rhetoric and whitewashing the people that are using it, supporting them.

00:50:40.000 The fix gets more and more intense and less enjoyable, I can tell you that.

00:50:46.000 Orin, I want to read this tweet, or at least part of it, from John Favreau, former speechwriter for Obama, one of the, what is it, what's the podcast called?

00:50:54.000 Pod Save America.

00:50:55.000 Sincere question Do Trump supporters who genuinely want to reduce political violence actually think that lobbying transparently hypocritical accusations about the left's rhetoric is in any way effective?

00:51:07.000 Are we really going to go through another cycle where MAGA folks point out incendiary rhetoric on the left without ever acknowledging that some of the most violent and incendiary rhetoric in America comes from the president and his supporters?

00:51:18.000 Do you not think that the rest of the country has eyes and ears?

00:51:22.000 I genuinely don't know what the hell he's talking about because when I play the clips, Oren, I'll just pick.

00:51:29.000 I have a grab bag here.

00:51:30.000 The team gave me so many here.

00:51:33.000 Here's Destiny talking about how close he came to driving to some guy's house and shooting him.

00:51:38.000 Sot 21.

00:51:39.000 I was so.

00:51:40.000 You have no. 0.99

00:51:40.000 Like, it's actually kind of scary how close I was to getting people together to go down to his house and kill him and his family. 0.99

00:51:46.000 I was so close. 0.91

00:51:47.000 He had this address.

00:51:49.000 I had streets mapped out and.

00:51:51.000 Every you have no idea.

00:51:52.000 That's when I first had to get an interest in like owning a weapon.

00:51:54.000 I got a permit to own a gun and everything.

00:51:56.000 Okay, how about this?

00:51:57.000 This is a Sam Piker, the New York Times Golden Boy, uh, Sot 20.

00:52:01.000 Hurt poor people that they can they they can afford housing in Berkeley.

00:52:05.000 I don't know how well my understanding is that the property owners who have properties there choose just not to rent it at all. 1.00

00:52:12.000 Yeah, kill them, kill those and murder those in the street. 1.00

00:52:15.000 Let the streets let the streets soak in their red capitalist bloods, dude. 1.00

00:52:21.000 So, I don't know what John Favreau's talking about.

00:52:23.000 I don't know a single conservative that talks like this.

00:52:26.000 I don't.

00:52:26.000 I don't know.

00:52:27.000 Maybe they are, and maybe they're fringy.

00:52:29.000 I condemn you if you are that person.

00:52:32.000 I don't know a single.

00:52:33.000 These are mainstream figures on the left.

00:52:37.000 Senators, candidates for Senate in Michigan.

00:52:39.000 What's that guy?

00:52:40.000 El Said or whatever.

00:52:41.000 He's campaigning with that guy.

00:52:45.000 So, I don't understand what this, you know, both sidesism is, Oren.

00:52:49.000 I don't see it.

00:52:50.000 And I'm sick of being called like I'm some. 1.00

00:52:52.000 Fascist Nazi that wants blood in the shit. 1.00

00:52:54.000 I've never called for that. 1.00

00:52:55.000 I don't know anybody respectable that has called for that.

00:52:58.000 Yeah.

00:52:59.000 And when, for example, when the president said that stuff about Rob Reiner, we said we didn't care for it.

00:53:05.000 No.

00:53:05.000 We didn't like it.

00:53:05.000 And even then, even if it was kind of gross, it was far short of, I'm going to go to somebody's house and shoot them.

00:53:13.000 Oh, kill those MFers. 1.00

00:53:15.000 Like, no. 1.00

00:53:15.000 The president doesn't say anything like that. 1.00

00:53:17.000 We got the Steve Scalise shooting.

00:53:18.000 We've got Charlie's assassination.

00:53:19.000 We've got multiple assassination attempts against Trump.

00:53:22.000 Like, what's it going to take before they put this away?

00:53:25.000 Are they just never going to do it?

00:53:27.000 Reflect on it, Oren.

00:53:29.000 The floor is yours.

00:53:30.000 Both sides need to calm down.

00:53:32.000 Well, like you're saying, even if you could find a bunch of clips of right wingers saying something comparable, which I don't think you can, the proof is in the pudding.

00:53:39.000 We've seen what's actually happened.

00:53:41.000 The truth is that Joe Biden wasn't dodging bullets on a regular basis, that you didn't see left wing political activists taking bullets when they're at speeches on college campuses.

00:53:50.000 The truth is that we can see what is actually causing violence in the United States, who's really getting it done.

00:53:57.000 And that's obviously the left.

00:53:59.000 And they're never going to stop.

00:54:00.000 They're never going to dial this back.

00:54:02.000 They're never going to take ownership for this.

00:54:04.000 They're never going to stop and reflect on what they're doing to the body politic.

00:54:07.000 Because, like I said, this has been a key feature of leftist politics for decades now.

00:54:13.000 And they expect to get away with it unchecked.

00:54:16.000 And so, what we need is consequences.

00:54:18.000 There have to be real serious consequences directly from the government on what's going on here.

00:54:25.000 If every one of these platforms can shut down something like Parlor, Because that was supposed to be the way that January 6th was coordinated, then certainly you can shut down something like Blue Sky that is currently pumping this rhetoric out routinely.

00:54:39.000 All right, but Orin, and I saw you tweet about that and I thought it was a great point because, you know, Parler was singled out, targeted for inciting violence.

00:54:47.000 And we cried that that was anti free speech, okay?

00:54:50.000 So what's the argument if we actually got some backbone and we pressured Tim Cook and Google to take down Blue Sky from the app store?

00:55:00.000 You know, what's the counter to that?

00:55:03.000 I don't understand at this point people who think that.

00:55:09.000 Going out and encouraging the murder of conservatives is going to somehow be permissible under any understanding of free speech, right?

00:55:18.000 Like, there's one thing where we're complaining about how other political parties act.

00:55:23.000 It's another thing to openly and regularly call for violence, which is something we see on Blue Sky a lot.

00:55:29.000 It's not some theoretical thing that's going on over there.

00:55:32.000 And we also know that these groups are coordinating on places like Discord on a regular basis to do violence.

00:55:39.000 Discord knows this coordination is happening.

00:55:41.000 They.

00:55:42.000 Regularly ban right wing chats where none of this is happening, but they will allow left wing chats where violence is actively being coordinated.

00:55:49.000 So these tech platforms are just allowing for the expression of alternative political views.

00:55:54.000 I'm not here saying we have to shut down all discussion on the efficacy of communism or even open borders immigration.

00:56:02.000 What I'm saying is we have to stop people from openly and repeatedly calling for the murder of conservatives, for planning the murder of conservatives on their platform.

00:56:10.000 I totally agree.

00:56:11.000 I think there needs to be drastic measures taken.

00:56:15.000 The fact that this is not Even covered by incitement.

00:56:18.000 Like this apparently doesn't meet the, you know, Hassan Piker calling for blood in the streets of capitalists or whatever doesn't even meet the, because it's not a specific imminent threat.

00:56:28.000 It's just like a broad idea.

00:56:29.000 So you can't get him on that.

00:56:30.000 There's got to be protections for this stuff.

00:56:32.000 Openly calling for political murder and assassination.

00:56:35.000 We played another clip in hour one of Hassan Piker saying somebody's got to do it and everybody laughs and he's like, you all know what I'm talking about.

00:56:43.000 Yeah, because they're all in the Discord chats.

00:56:45.000 They're all on Blue Sky.

00:56:46.000 They're all on Reddit.

00:56:47.000 They know exactly what they're talking about.

00:56:49.000 And this guy, this Manacqua, you know, brewing company, he said, Oh, we got so close to giving you free beer.

00:56:55.000 Somebody's got to get better at marksmanship.

00:56:57.000 We got so close today.

00:56:59.000 This is so prevalent and so mainstreamed on the left that you have, there has to be a law. 0.88

00:57:06.000 There has, and if we don't have one, make a damn law that can attack, like actually convict and prosecute these people that are throwing our political system in disarray by, you know, promoting violence. 0.56

00:57:19.000 I mean, Blake, you're the one who always pours. 0.86

00:57:20.000 Well, I'm going to be a skeptic here because I think by this point, we're pretty aware of how this plays out because we've seen it play out online.

00:57:27.000 Every time we're going to pass a law to tamp down on extreme rhetoric online or this or like the latest new threat, it always will end up being used vastly more against the right than the left.

00:57:39.000 So if we pass a law that says you can't advocate violence online, it'll just be they'll continue to advocate violence online, but they'll have another tool to ban the parlors of the future for.

00:57:49.000 They don't need to play fair.

00:57:51.000 Yeah, I mean, that's true.

00:57:52.000 But go ahead, Orin.

00:57:54.000 Yeah.

00:57:54.000 Sorry, I think less than new laws, what we need is aggressive enforcement.

00:57:59.000 What we need is the willingness to go after these organizations, to find existing violations, to apply pressure, and let the left know that there's a true social cost for what they're doing.

00:58:10.000 Would additional laws be helpful in that?

00:58:12.000 Yes.

00:58:12.000 And if they are, okay, great.

00:58:14.000 But I don't think the key is passing new legislation.

00:58:17.000 I think the key is taking hold of the enforcement mechanism and using those aggressively.

00:58:22.000 We've already seen the left do things like.

00:58:24.000 Really thoroughly punish anti abortion protesters because they disagree with their politics.

00:58:30.000 We know that they didn't need to write a whole bunch of new laws to make that happen.

00:58:34.000 We can see similar actions from the Trump administration without having to go out there and pass a bunch of draconian laws.

00:58:39.000 We just need to use what's on the books to apply pressure on a regular basis.

00:58:43.000 Yeah, well, and I hope you're right.

00:58:44.000 SPLC, is it the first of many indictments to come down the pike?

00:58:49.000 I certainly hope so.

00:58:50.000 And I, you know, it wasn't lost on me, Oren, that there was a connection just a couple days after that story broke.

00:58:56.000 I can't say that, you know, it was the spark, but it was certainly noteworthy.

00:59:01.000 Charlie's last text to Stephen Miller was calling for.

00:59:06.000 The need and the urgent need to defund these networks that finance these groups, that fund them.

00:59:13.000 But, you know, it's gotten, the virus has spread so far that it's like, you know, I don't know how you tackle it all, but I think you're right.

00:59:21.000 You have to start with accountability with some and start sending the message that this isn't okay.

00:59:25.000 But the question then becomes how.

00:59:27.000 You don't like new laws, okay?

00:59:29.000 You can enforce what we already have.

00:59:31.000 I get that.

00:59:34.000 I guess what I'm struggling with here, Orin, is the problem seems so widespread, it's difficult to know where to start.

00:59:39.000 No, it's obviously a huge problem because, as we both have already acknowledged, we waited to do this too long.

00:59:45.000 We let it fester.

00:59:46.000 We let it grow.

00:59:47.000 We let it get well beyond what we should have.

00:59:49.000 And now, if we want to get root and branch, it's grown so far that we're going to have to go pretty deep to get it out.

00:59:55.000 Now, like I said, I think the beginning of this, the dominoes that need to fall, as we were talking about, are hitting groups like the SPLC, the ADL, groups that we know are regularly going after conservatives that are keeping basically hit lists, databases that allow you to fundraise off of exposing.

01:00:11.000 Where conservatives live and how to most easily harass them, get them fired, get them doxxed, all of these things.

01:00:17.000 There are entire basically underground leftist militias doing this 24 7.

01:00:22.000 And they do that because they have the structure, the encouragement, the funding of these major organizations.

01:00:28.000 If we can go out and root that out, will that clean everything out of the system?

01:00:32.000 No.

01:00:32.000 But it will get us some of the key funding mechanisms, the key organizational tools.

01:00:37.000 And I am someone who's a big believer in what we call elite theory.

01:00:39.000 I think that leadership and organization drive political action.

01:00:43.000 When the money dries up, when the leadership dries up, when the rhetoric dries up, when the free pass on violence dries up, I think you'll see a lot of this leftist progressive machine blow away.

01:00:55.000 Not everything.

01:00:55.000 We won't magically solve the problem, but I think it does a lot to kind of cut this hydra off, not at each little head, but at the trunk where this thing is really flowing from.

01:01:05.000 I think that's right.

01:01:06.000 I think the second you disrupt their networks and their ease of being, their ease of talking, you really do sort of.

01:01:15.000 Make things very difficult on them.

01:01:17.000 I think you would at least see much less.

01:01:19.000 People would be much less inclined to speak openly the way that they are.

01:01:23.000 Listen, the First Amendment is sacrosanct.

01:01:26.000 I get that.

01:01:27.000 But I'm starting to get really fed up with people celebrating assassination culture and getting away with it.

01:01:33.000 There's got to be something that you can do to take these people on and to make their lives a living hell, to be honest. 0.99

01:01:39.000 And again, I go back to this Manakwa guy. 1.00

01:01:41.000 You know, he's doubling down.

01:01:44.000 Fox reached out to him for a comment and then basically said, Fox is.

01:01:47.000 Guilty of inspiring all this political violence.

01:01:50.000 Again, this both sides is them.

01:01:52.000 They just use Trump as the catch all for, oh, we're justified in what we do because Trump.

01:01:58.000 We're justified in the violence that we encourage because Trump. 1.00

01:02:01.000 He's the fascist. 1.00

01:02:02.000 He's the Nazi. 0.93

01:02:03.000 They are so dug into this position that it's difficult to know what to do with it.

01:02:07.000 Oren McIntyre, columnist and Blaze TV host, the Oren McIntyre show.

01:02:11.000 I recommend everybody check it out.

01:02:13.000 Oren is a dissident thinker and he's at the front lines of a lot of the, I would say, emergent thought.

01:02:19.000 On the right.

01:02:20.000 He's a Protestant guy who kind of bridges those worlds too, which is really interesting.

01:02:25.000 Oren, thank you for making the time.

01:02:27.000 You can check him out at Oren McIntyre on X as well.

01:02:31.000 Thank you, Oren.

01:02:31.000 Great follow.

01:02:32.000 And we'll talk to you soon.

01:02:33.000 Thanks again, guys.

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01:05:11.000 We're going to bring in Mark Halperin, who is a friend of the show.

01:05:14.000 And I happened, I didn't see Mark.

01:05:16.000 At the event, which is kind of sad in retrospect.

01:05:20.000 But I was trying to get out and get to my hotel, and I'm looking at news coverage of it, and I see him still mulling about on the floor of the ballroom.

01:05:30.000 So, Mark, welcome back to the show.

01:05:33.000 Give us your impression of the evening as you saw it from your vantage point and kind of everything that's ensued since.

01:05:39.000 Mark Halpern.

01:05:40.000 Well, you saw me there because I'm a lingerer.

01:05:43.000 There was reporting to be done, and I'm surprised how quickly everybody left.

01:05:47.000 So I stayed around, and I was with some nice people.

01:05:49.000 I think the camera is probably showing them, not me.

01:05:52.000 I think there are three main things I'm focused on tonight, and I'm happy to talk about them in depth.

01:05:57.000 But one is the security was inadequate.

01:05:59.000 I know the president and others are saying what a great job the service did, and in some level they did.

01:06:04.000 But having I was a guest in the hotel, I was in and around the hotel for three days, and I'm stunned at how lax the security was from all three floors that are germane to that.

01:06:14.000 So I really hope they learn the lessons of what happened.

01:06:17.000 And I know Kash Patel said this morning that they were making changes.

01:06:20.000 I hope they do.

01:06:22.000 Second is, The level of liberal media bias just continues.

01:06:26.000 Caroline Levitt just talked about it at the briefing.

01:06:27.000 But if someone who'd written the mirror image of what this guy has written, who's been accused of the shooting about Barack Obama, say, and Barack Obama, this is the third time the country tried, someone tried to kill him, it'd be covered much differently by the media than is being covered.

01:06:44.000 And I really wish my colleagues would think through that.

01:06:46.000 I know they don't like Donald Trump.

01:06:48.000 I know they like to pretend he didn't win the popular vote in the electoral college, but it's really unfortunate how divisive that is.

01:06:54.000 And then lastly, I'd say, For those on the right, including the president, who say, you know, we need to lower our voices and change the rhetoric.

01:07:01.000 The president and others on the right who have used inflammatory rhetoric also need to consider their role in all this.

01:07:07.000 And if they wanted to change, they can help contribute to it by not just criticizing the left, but also by lowering the level of the rhetoric on the right as well.

01:07:15.000 I'll be honest with you, Mark.

01:07:17.000 You are, you're unbiased, and I appreciate that.

01:07:21.000 But I'm just, you know, I don't see the both sidesism.

01:07:27.000 I really don't buy that argument.

01:07:29.000 I understand that that's what the left is saying.

01:07:31.000 I just read John Favreau's tweet, who said, You know, are you guys really going to just, you know, be so hypocritical as to not own your own side?

01:07:39.000 And it's like, Well, I don't know about you, Mark, but I don't know how many assassination attempts it's going to take or successful ones in Charlie's case before we drop that.

01:07:49.000 And the left actually owns their side of the aisle here.

01:07:52.000 I mean, this just happened.

01:07:54.000 This is JB Pritzker on CNN, SOT 33.

01:07:57.000 Remember that it's been Donald Trump and the Republicans that have called for political violence.

01:08:03.000 Donald Trump, from the very beginning, remember when he talked about a protester at one of his rallies that they should just beat him up, punch him?

01:08:13.000 He's talked about the death penalty for General Mark Milley.

01:08:19.000 He has called for jailing his political opponents, me included.

01:08:24.000 So this is a president who unfortunately slips into that mode so easily.

01:08:29.000 But I think we should get away from all of that.

01:08:31.000 I'm sure that we can find examples across both sides of the aisle.

01:08:37.000 I'm sure we could.

01:08:38.000 We've been playing him on the show all day.

01:08:41.000 I understand what you're saying, but it's like one side, Mark.

01:08:45.000 Even when Trump says what he says, he's not saying some vigilante go out and take him out.

01:08:50.000 But we have multiple examples on the left where that's being essentially vocalized, right?

01:08:57.000 I could play you a montage.

01:08:58.000 I'll play you a montage that's stripped down.

01:09:01.000 This isn't even the bad one.

01:09:03.000 This is just From elected leaders, from Democrats.

01:09:06.000 SA 8.

01:09:07.000 I'll play this and get your reaction.

01:09:08.000 SA 8.

01:09:09.000 People need to start taking to the streets.

01:09:11.000 This is a dictator.

01:09:13.000 You know, there needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there's unrest in our lives.

01:09:17.000 Enemies of the state.

01:09:19.000 Show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful. 1.00

01:09:23.000 Do something about your dad's immigration practices, you feckless. 1.00

01:09:27.000 When they go low, we kick. 1.00

01:09:29.000 How do you resist the temptation to run up and wring her neck? 0.99

01:09:31.000 The biggest terror threat in this country is white men. 0.99

01:09:36.000 Most of them radicalized to the right. 1.00

01:09:39.000 I thought he should have punched him in the face. 1.00

01:09:41.000 I'd like to punch him in the face. 1.00

01:09:43.000 I said, if we were in high school, I'd take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him. 1.00

01:09:46.000 Punch some people in the face. 0.99

01:09:48.000 When was the last time an actor assassinated a president? 1.00

01:09:52.000 They're still going to have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump. 0.98

01:09:55.000 And that's a fact. 0.97

01:09:56.000 I mean, listen, these are montages other people put together.

01:09:59.000 I could agree with some of those clips, others, not so much.

01:10:01.000 But the point is like, this fascist tyrant stuff, this Nazi stuff, it is totally saturated.

01:10:11.000 Certain quarters of Reddit and certain quarters of Blue Sky.

01:10:14.000 I just don't see it both ways.

01:10:16.000 And I'm open to your arguments here.

01:10:18.000 You and I agree about two things and maybe disagree about one.

01:10:22.000 The two we agree about is the comments you just played.

01:10:25.000 You could play comments like that for five hours from top elected officials and people in the blue media.

01:10:32.000 And there's almost no accountability for it.

01:10:35.000 And we agree that the press is completely biased about all this stuff and don't treat the two sides equally.

01:10:40.000 So those are two asymmetries that are super important.

01:10:43.000 And you and I, I don't think, disagree a shred about those things.

01:10:45.000 And I've said that a lot.

01:10:47.000 I think the thing it seems we disagree about is you can't say that the rhetoric on the right, you have to say it's equal if you don't want to, but you have to say the president.

01:10:56.000 Has engaged in coarse rhetoric also.

01:10:59.000 He celebrated the death of Rob Reiner, someone who was very important to people on the left.

01:11:04.000 I could give you 100 examples if you'd like that are comparable.

01:11:07.000 We actually, just so you know what, we condemned that on this show.

01:11:11.000 Actually, and I wrote something very nice about Rob Reiner when he was in his life, son.

01:11:16.000 I'm glad, but not everybody on the right does.

01:11:19.000 I would say the mass pardon of the January 6th, the people convicted for crimes connected to January 6th, same thing.

01:11:27.000 You can say you don't condemn it, but it really does divide the country.

01:11:31.000 So it doesn't mean I'm saying everything's equal.

01:11:34.000 It's not both sides, but the president, if you agree with me about the Rob Reiner one, I could probably get you to agree to 100 others.

01:11:40.000 The president, if he really wants to bring the country together, doesn't mean he has to turn the other cheek for the outrages of the first two categories.

01:11:47.000 But he can't say there's no third category because you've acknowledged there's at least one and there's a lot more.

01:11:53.000 I mean, I would acknowledge that there are certain things that the president has said that are rough and gruff.

01:11:57.000 I certainly agree with that.

01:11:59.000 But I would say that, you know, When you're looking at it from a perspective of what he's been up against, I actually understand that he wants to fight back and push back.

01:12:10.000 But again, there is a distinction between vigilantism and assassination culture, what you hear from Hassan Piker and the glorification of Luigi Mangione, compared to saying somebody should get the death penalty, meaning through the system.

01:12:25.000 He should be prosecuted, held accountable.

01:12:27.000 There should be, you know, one side is using this, when you hear that rhetoric from one side, it's very distinct.

01:12:34.000 It's one side saying use the system to hold people accountable, the other side saying blood in the streets.

01:12:39.000 And I just, it's not equivalent in my mind.

01:12:42.000 To kind of tie them together here, I think the best part, point for what Mark is arguing is Donald Trump is the president of the United States.

01:12:50.000 There is a certain weight that comes to everything a president does.

01:12:54.000 He certainly has vastly more power to make sure anyone hears what he says.

01:12:58.000 It affects people a lot more what he says.

01:13:00.000 And he said some stuff that you and I have both said is not very presidential.

01:13:04.000 It's not good, frankly.

01:13:05.000 It's not even good politically.

01:13:07.000 Well, but just, but it also, I think I agree with what you just said.

01:13:12.000 It also divides the country.

01:13:14.000 You just can't deny that it also divides the country.

01:13:17.000 It doesn't erase the first two categories that I said, but it's the reality that it divides the country.

01:13:22.000 And as you guys know, there are many Republicans who you're friends with who feel even more strongly than you do, who support the president, but feel more strongly than you do, even, and express it sometimes about how divisive the president can be in their view unnecessarily.

01:13:36.000 And Blake, as you said, sometimes not in his political interest.

01:13:39.000 Yes, but at the same time, I think in terms of really trying to lay out specific cases where they seem dead serious that political violence is justified, I do think we see that more on the left.

01:13:53.000 And we've seen it a decade at this point.

01:13:55.000 Well, and it's coming through in the polling.

01:13:56.000 When he took office, when he took, yeah, it comes through in the polling where they say more explicitly, sometimes violence is good.

01:14:02.000 We've seen, for example, at the start of the president's first term, so well before he said a lot of the things, before January 6th, Before anything he said about Rob Reiner, we had the whole, you know, when is it okay to punch a Nazi?

01:14:14.000 That was a big talking point that went around on the left to justify why Antifa might assault people at the inauguration or at other events.

01:14:23.000 There is a history to this to the left that I think we see it bubbling up more and more.

01:14:28.000 We even see it in other countries.

01:14:31.000 In Italy, I believe, they elected a member of Antifa to the European Parliament or their own parliament just so that they wouldn't get arrested for literally assaulting someone with a hammer.

01:14:41.000 I think there is something to be said that the left has street violence and occasionally assassination more baked into its political rhetoric and its political practice.

01:14:54.000 Yeah.

01:14:55.000 And if my colleagues in the press covered it fairly and equally and equitably, I think everybody'd be better off because there wouldn't be so much resentment on the right.

01:15:03.000 And the president wouldn't feel satisfied as he often does in saying, I'm a counterpuncher.

01:15:07.000 I'm just going after people like Rob Reiner, who went after me.

01:15:11.000 That's the people who are at fault as much as anybody else people in the press who cover one side tough and the other side barely at all.

01:15:20.000 Yeah.

01:15:20.000 I mean, I agree with that completely.

01:15:23.000 Mark, stay right there.

01:15:24.000 I want to talk about the issue of live events, of gathering together in public.

01:15:32.000 There's a whole move of people that are saying we just can't do it anymore.

01:15:34.000 And I think that would be a tragedy for the country.

01:15:36.000 All right.

01:15:37.000 So the Jimmy Kimmel incident, I'm going to talk about this first.

01:15:42.000 So we'll play the clip.

01:15:43.000 He did a mock, I guess, White House correspondent speech.

01:15:48.000 And we'll play the clip.

01:15:49.000 SOP 13. 0.99

01:15:51.000 Our first lady, Melania, is here. 1.00

01:15:53.000 Look at Melania. 0.97

01:15:54.000 So beautiful.

01:15:54.000 Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.

01:15:59.000 So Melania now has tweeted and said, Kimmel's hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country.

01:16:05.000 His monologue about my family isn't comedy.

01:16:07.000 His words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America.

01:16:11.000 And then she eventually says, enough is enough.

01:16:12.000 It's time for ABC to take a stand.

01:16:14.000 How many times will ABC's leadership enable Kimmel's atrocious behavior at the expense of our community?

01:16:20.000 Trump has just truth socialed, basically saying he's no way funny, terrible television ratings.

01:16:28.000 He was there for a very obvious.

01:16:30.000 He's talking about the shooter.

01:16:32.000 Basically, they're all taking shots at Kimmel.

01:16:35.000 Sorry, I'm just reading this because it just broke right as we brought this up.

01:16:39.000 And he says Jimmy Kimmel should be immediately fired by Disney and ABC.

01:16:42.000 Thank you for your attention to this matter. 1.00

01:16:45.000 I happen to think Jimmy Kimmel is a scumbag. 0.99

01:16:49.000 I tweeted as much over the weekend. 0.99

01:16:52.000 I still am not over the fact that he called Charlie's assassin part of MAGA and then had a chance to apologize, take it back.

01:16:58.000 He didn't correct the record. 0.99

01:17:00.000 I think he's a coward. 0.99

01:17:02.000 But this is America. 0.98

01:17:04.000 There is free speech.

01:17:05.000 How do you square that circle?

01:17:07.000 Look, on the one hand, as you said, free speech.

01:17:09.000 On the other, 50% of America has had to deal with the reality that these broadcast networks think it's fine to have all liberals and anti Trump people host these shows.

01:17:18.000 It's not equitable.

01:17:20.000 It's not symmetrical.

01:17:21.000 It's not fair.

01:17:23.000 I think it's fine, even though the president oversees the FCC, I think it's fine for the Trumps to have free speech in reaction to Jimmy Kimmel's offensive humor to them.

01:17:33.000 And say he should be fired.

01:17:34.000 And it's fine if ABC doesn't want to fire him.

01:17:36.000 They're a private company.

01:17:37.000 The market should decide if his ratings are good and ABC wants to keep him on.

01:17:42.000 And if people want to accept that, that's fine.

01:17:44.000 I just, as always, I say if Jimmy Kimmel had made that joke about Barack Obama and to Michelle Obama, imagine what the coverage would be like.

01:17:53.000 And the dominant media covers this story to the extent they cover it.

01:17:57.000 And I've been watching cable, I've not seen it on cable yet all day since the first lady first went on Twitter.

01:18:03.000 But they cover it barely at all.

01:18:05.000 And they cover it kind of like an interesting media story.

01:18:08.000 Rather than the way they would cover it if a comedian had said it about Michelle Obama, that they'd be covering it as an outrage and demanding the guy be fired.

01:18:15.000 So, you know, that's part of what drives this it's people on the right who feel it's just not fair that Jimmy Kimmel and ABC act like he's just a comedian when in fact he's a partisan.

01:18:27.000 I want to show you a tweet from Charlie.

01:18:31.000 He said, Assassination culture is spreading on the left.

01:18:33.000 48% of liberals say it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk.

01:18:38.000 55% said the same about Donald Trump.

01:18:41.000 In California, activists are naming ballot measures after Luigi Mangione.

01:18:45.000 The left is being whipped into a violent frenzy.

01:18:47.000 Any setback, whether losing an election or losing a court case, justifies maximally violent response.

01:18:53.000 This is a natural outgrowth of left wing protest culture tolerating violence and mayhems for years on end.

01:18:58.000 The cowardice of local prosecutors and school officials have turned the left into a ticking time bomb.

01:19:04.000 And then there's the graphs justifying that it was a poll that was taken.

01:19:10.000 Is it safe to hold events, Mark, in this climate?

01:19:14.000 Well, I'm very disappointed, as I said in an earlier segment about the level of lack of security at the dinner.

01:19:21.000 I think there's a way to secure almost any venue if you spend enough money on it and give the professionals enough time.

01:19:27.000 So we have to have events.

01:19:28.000 And I couldn't agree with the president more.

01:19:30.000 You can't let people exercise a veto, a terrorist heck veto over holding public events.

01:19:37.000 So, yeah, we just need to plan and we need to secure and we need to spend the money to do it.

01:19:43.000 But it's vitally important.

01:19:44.000 And I mean, the reality is this has been a reality since 9 11.

01:19:48.000 Now, you know, quarter century.

01:19:51.000 We have an incredibly open society.

01:19:54.000 We, you know, Charlie knew full well, you guys know better than I do.

01:19:57.000 Charlie knew full well that there were dangers to going out and he had security, but our society is open.

01:20:02.000 And if somebody's determined, even with the president of the United States, they can get a shot.

01:20:07.000 So it's imperative to have good people in public life.

01:20:11.000 There'll be people who don't run for president in 2028, who otherwise would have run because their families say no, too dangerous.

01:20:18.000 And if you're not Donald Trump with your own plane, And your own ability to afford security, it's a risk no matter who you are.

01:20:25.000 So, we got to spend enough money to keep people safe so the national town square is available to everybody.

01:20:30.000 Yeah, I think you're right.

01:20:31.000 I think we have to acknowledge the risk, but we can't allow ourselves to live as a society under siege.

01:20:37.000 I think we need to rebuild the moral consensus against this.

01:20:41.000 Yes.

01:20:41.000 One of the things we've talked about, frankly, I just think this would be useful is if we just said, if you attempt to assassinate a public figure, even if you fail, it should be capital crime.

01:20:51.000 It should be like this person, he should face the death penalty for what he did.

01:20:56.000 Because that is one of the ways you send the message. 0.89

01:20:58.000 This is not acceptable.

01:21:00.000 In this society, we debate things.

01:21:03.000 We vote on things.

01:21:04.000 We argue about things.

01:21:06.000 We do not try to shoot people for what their views are, period.

01:21:09.000 And I think we need to rebuild that consensus.

01:21:13.000 It's hard to get a conviction on that, but you're right.

01:21:16.000 And I think that's what we're arguing about here because right now we're stuck at this both sides thing.

01:21:20.000 And the left is saying the right started it.

01:21:22.000 The right is saying the left started it.

01:21:24.000 Frankly, I think the argument is stronger in our favor, but we're just still arguing about it's a he said, she said.

01:21:31.000 It's a circular argument.

01:21:33.000 I don't know where we're going to get anywhere.

01:21:35.000 But at some point, I think that my inclination is there has to be real consequences rooting out some of the support structures and permission structures that enable this.

01:21:44.000 Because if you look at the polling, Mark, there's a lot more liberals that think this is okay than conservatives.

01:21:49.000 As a matter of fact, the more conservative you are, the less you agree that this is justifiable.

01:21:54.000 So, final 10, 15 seconds to you, Mark.

01:21:58.000 The left should not be passive or complacent because the media favors them on this.

01:22:04.000 They should really look at themselves.

01:22:06.000 Everybody in public life should look at themselves and say, are they contributing to this or not?

01:22:11.000 Mark Halperin, it was good to see you on TV.

01:22:13.000 I'm sorry I didn't see you in the room.

01:22:15.000 I'll see you at the next one.

01:22:17.000 I'll see you at the next one.

01:22:18.000 I know.

01:22:19.000 We'll see you later.

01:22:23.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - April 27, 2026

Yet Another Attempted Trump Assassination

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