This is Gary and Shannon, and you're listening to KFI AM six forty,
the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Just a quick
pop into FI Serve arena there in Milwaukee singing the national anthem, John Stanford,
as they get ready to kick things off. They just officially gabble it
in here in just a few moments, this Republican National Convention. Rich McHugh
is a correspondent for News Nation and joined us now and Rich, like we've
been saying, no shortage of things to talk about and write in time for
the kickoff of the RNC. Oh my god, the amount of stuff that
have happened since just since Friday is hard to even believe. You know,
with the document's case and Trump shooting, there's a lot going on. Well,
first of all, I'm curious, I know how our organization is handling
this. Are you guys just all hands on deck right now for these events
for the next few days? Pretty much we are. We're spread all over,
We're concentrated. Many people are in Milwaukee. I'm not Milwaukee, but
there's people covering, you know, the drilling down the shooting in DC on
hand in Pennsylvania, and so yes, we are spread all over the place.
Rich you're an investigative reporter. You were a supervising producer for NBC when
you and Ronan Pharaoh dug and broke the story about Harvey Weinstein, which was
the floodgates opening for a number of people in Hollywood and elsewhere in terms of
their bad behavior. When you look at what happened on Saturday and with the
Secret Service and what appears to be a glaring failure, what do you think
is going to happen to that story in terms of an investigation and if we
find out the answers. Well, thank you for that introduction. I appreciate.
I think there's going to be many investigations. I know that the FBI
is investigating, I know the Secret Service is investigating. So everybody's going to
be doing their own investigating. I think it will be weeks, if not
months. I spoke with four different secrets former Secret Service members yesterday, and
pretty much they all said roughly the same thing, which is, there are
limitations to their abilities on site. Now, they weren't excusing it, they
were saying this is horrific, but they're saying at a certain point they establish
a perimeter, there are multiple perimeters in this case they have to work with.
In every case, they have to work with local and state affilled authorities.
And in the they were clear to make to say, look, they
were not there and they don't have independent knowledge of what happened there, but
clearly there was a breakdown in communication at the very least in communication between the
local, state and the Secret Service because the shooter should I said, how
did the shooter even get within one hundred and fifty yards? It's absolutely crazy,
And they said, look, they probably did not have a Secret Service
member stationed to that building because it's technically outside the perimeter, but somebody you
can bad from local and state authorities were assigned to that building. And how
that information was not transferred to Secret Service that is going to be what the
focus of the whole thing, the inquiry will be on. Now, there
is also a site security plan that is established and gone over every week in
the weeks leading up to these things, so that will be a focus.
It will They said, look, when you get this site security plan,
they'll say XYZ person was assigned to this building, and we'll tell you right
there and then drill down further and say, you know, was that person
doing anything? Did they alert anybody? What happened? That's all. It's
a lot. Yeah, I mean, I just I feel like we want
answers yesterday, you know, we want answers on Saturday. And like you
said, these investigations take time, and I think they've got to give us
something leading up to that about how this failure could have happened. Yeah,
it's hard. It's hard to comprehend. I believe in this day and age,
with all the cell phones and all the technology. There's videos coming out
now which seems to be very reliable. You see these, there's a dozen
people pointing to the shooter on the top of this building. You even hear
what sounds like one of them talking to authorities saying there's a guy up there.
And how in this day and age can can that happen? Where somebody
can get on a roof with an ar rifle one hundred and fifty yards from
a former president just kind of boggles the mind in this day and but it
happened. And so my sense is that in talking to these former agents,
their former secret service, is that there's going to have to be some real
soul searching going on and possibly changes going forward, because if somebody is establishing
a heart and fifty year perimeter, that's simply just not far enough clearly as
evidence about what happens. The expectation I saw was that Secret Service officials,
I don't know if it's going to be the head of the Secret Service herself
or somebody below her, but that they would be briefing some members of Congress
as early as today on what happened. Again, a briefing, not a
hearing that we expect next week. Do you think we might get some nuggets
of information from members of Congress who would leak some of that stuff. I
think so, because I heard that that meeting is happening, and there's a
lot of a lot of people in that meeting. Apparently it was briefing the
head of From what I heard, the head of the Secret Service was going
to be on that meeting via zoom, but there were many people, everybody
close to the president, I believe, members of Congress. So yes,
I think we will hear something, not officially, but you can bet we'll
hear something leaked from people who were privy to that meeting, and it will
give us a sense of is the Secret Service placing the blame at the local
and state authorities. It sounds like the local and state authorities. The district
attorney of that county is basically saying, look, let's call it spate of
Spade. The Secret Service is in charge of the security at that event,
it's not us. So it seems like there's already a division happening. Rich
McHugh from News Nation, thanks so much, great analysis. Thank you you've
read it. One of the things that came up during the news at the
top of the hour, ABC was reporting that that building where the gunman was
on the roof so close to President Trump on Saturday, actually was a staging
area for the local police tactical team that was doing overwatch of the crowd.
So from a staging area it became abandoned. It doesn't make sense that this
guy was able to get anywhere near there. I mean, there's got they
have to be able to find something else. You don't walk into a staging
areas surrounded by cops with a rifle and then it's just abandoned and he's the
only one that remains. Was he there? Was he lying in wait?
Was he there early did he get there before, Because those types of events
that I mean, they were there days before. Anytime the Secret Service scopes
out an event like this, especially an outdoor venue, they're gonna be there
days before. We get more answer quicker. When there's a standoff in Resita,
then we're getting here. And this was the assassination attempt of a former
president and the current front runner to be the next president. We're going to
need more answers and it's going to have to be done quicker. Sources have
told Fox that Marco Rubio has been told he is not the father all.
I'm sorry, he is not the vice presidential pick. So the understanding is
that former President Trump will announce his vice presidential running mate sometime today, and
they got as specific as saying it's probably going to be the one o'clock hour
hour time when he makes his announcement. The judge overseeing the classified documents case
has dismissed that case, saying that Jack Smith was unconstitutionally appointed to oversee that
thing. And the Republican National Convention started in Milwaukee a short time ago.
Well, a man died at that rally on Saturday, and he is being
remembered sparingly. He should be remembered more. Obviously, the attempted assassination of
a former president gets the headline, but this was a man from Pennsylvania who
was diving to protect his family when he heard the shots rung out. Corey
was a girl dad, Corey was a firefighter. Corey went to church every
Sunday. Corey loved his community. Most especially, Corey loved his family.
That was Josh Shapiro, the governor there, who spent time with Corey's family,
obviously thanked the family for Corey's service and just talked about the idea that
political violence is what took him out. Political disagreements can never ever be addressed
through violence. Disagreements are okay, but we need to use a peaceful political
process to settle those differences. The assassination attempt on the former president Donald Trump
last night was absolutely unacceptable and tragic. Laurie and I are grateful that the
former president is safe. President former President Trump has authorized a go Fundme page
for donations to the people killed or wounded in that attempt. So far,
it has raised what do you think, give me a figure, what do
you think? It's raised a million? Four point two million dollars. Now,
that shows how much support the former president has. That's that's maybe not
about that unfortunate situation and murder of that firefighter and the other two people.
That's all Trump based muscle right there. And I think it also is something
to mention that I have noticed in my own social media at least three posts
from people who said they were on the fence or they didn't this wasn't their
candidate. They weren't enthusiastic about going to the poll and voting for Trump.
They were going to hold their nose. But now he's one hundred percent their
candidate. They're not saying that quietly. I mentioned this because they're not saying
it quietly to their husband behind closed doors. They're publicly talking about it.
That's a great point because it would be a week ago there were probably people
you and I both know people who would have said, yeah, I'm going
to but I'm not going to talk about I'm going to vote for Trump.
But I'm not going to talk about it because I don't I don't want my
friends to know, or I don't want to get who to get into arguments
with people or lose friendships over who you vote. For for President. Nicole
Shanahan is a r FK Junior's vice presidential running mate. She donated a bunch
of money to that as well. She posted that she did that that would
be wait a minute, now, that would be quite a pick if he
chose r FK Junior. Oh interesting, I mean if if like we heard
earlier in the show from one of the one of the campaign surrogates that she
believed that there's going to be some sort of a significant surprise. I mentioned
that Fox had been reporting that Marco Rubio was told he's not the VP.
CNN is reporting Doug Bergham has been told he is not the father. Okay,
so this is like Maury Povinch got me a Manila envelope. So so
you're down to whatever I mean. Jd Vance obviously is one of the others
that has been remaining. Those those three, Marco Rubio, Doug Berghaman,
and Jade Vance were the three most often listed as sort of the short list.
You've got Tim Scott, You've probably got a couple of other people.
I saw Glenn Youngkin was on some people's list in terms of what it would
be young Kin because I have such a hard time saying his name young.
That's the way you say onion, isn't it? Oh, that's what it
is. I put sandwiches, and when I made sandwiches, I always used
to put youngkins on them, youngkins, onions, onion, onionin. I
don't know why I do that. Glenn Ungin the governor. So we'll see.
According to a couple of different sources, one o'clock today, at some
point in that one o'clock hour is when President Trump is going to announce former
President Trump, let's be clear, is going to announce who his vice presidential
running mate would be. Again the read what we will. But you know
jd Vance has been like the Trump family favorite, right, and they got
pressure because they thought they were going to have to pander to different blocks.
So they were talking about a woman or maybe Tim Scott or Mark Rubio.
But now I think they know that they're teflon and so they get to pick
whoever they want. And so they get to pick another white man. So
does he pick somebody who's going to not overshadow him? I mean, they
just picked their favorite, and jd Vance has kissed the ring the best.
I don't know about that. Marco Rubio is doing a pretty good impression of
time. Yeah, but Marco Rubio also had a lot of insults toward Trump
back, you know, years ago, so did so did jd. Vance.
He had a couple of things that are going to come up in conversation
that were not as supportive of Trump. Granted it was eight years ago and
a lot of people can change between them between now and then. But I
think JD. Vance is one of those people who kind of was able to
be wooed by Trump that he thought he wasn't going to like him, and
then, you know, I think that Trump likes that that he's once Jade
Vance got to know him, that he saw the era in his ways or
something. I will say. The one thing about jd Vance that to me
sticks out more than Doug Bergham's business acumen or Marco Rubio's legislative congressional experience is
that JD. Vance was a marine or is a marine, is a former
how do you say it? They're never a former marine. He enlisted in
the US Marine Corps, served as a combat correspondent in the Iraq War,
granted its public affairs in the Marine Aircraft Wing. But it's more than all
these other guys did from Ohio, went to Yale as a lawyer, all
the things, all the things. Steve Gregory is basically a cop joins us.
Now about that, now, Steve, when you hear tactical staging area,
is that something that is a busy hive of activity hours before the event
and then everyone takes their post and leaves that area abandoned? Not necessarily.
I mean a lot of these cases, you're always going to have someone behind
at a post because that's the central gathering point for one, and that's the
clearinghouse for information for two. So you're going to have a command post.
You'll have a you know, whether it's a tactical command post an incident command
post, you'll always have a command post nearby, and you'll usually have one
that's off site so that you've always got independent operational advantage so it's not that
close to the crisis or whatever the case is. And in this particular case,
you know, there's so much information coming out right now, it's really
hard to believe any one thing because everyone's got an opinion and a view on
this, including bystanders or bystanders. And I know that the Secret Service is
already starting to do some crisis communications where they are implying that the local police
department had jurisdiction over that particular slice of the security, which is odd to
me because the Secret Service has ultimate control over the security. Now, does
it sound like it could be too many cooks in the kitchen. Shouldn't there
be somebody who's in charge of all the coordination? Well, I'm not going
to speculate on this particular event because I don't have any internal or intimate knowledge
of its setup. I will tell you, based on my experience that in
cases like this, and I think the three of us is we've covered a
number of presidential events over our careers, and the one thing is for sure
is that security is always very tight and there's always somebody in charge. And
you can remember there was a couple probably two to three weeks in advance that
someone was out there. There's always an advanced team that's going out to assess
the property, assess the weak points, the choke points, the ingress,
the egress, medical, where do we put medical? Where's the emergency exit
round? I mean they're doing all of that in real time, and they're
formulating the plan and listen the Secret Service, you know, up till now
at least they've been experts in trying to figure all this out. I'm talking
to a retired Secret Service agent to this morning about all of this, because
over the weekend, you know, Gary knows, we were trying to get
some people on from the Secret Service past and present, and no one would
come on to talk about this. No one. And this retired guy I
talked with this morning, I said, great, thanks for calling me back.
I needed you Saturday, and he says, listen, after what I
witnessed, there's no way I'm talking about that. Yeah. I was going
to say that seems like an indication that even from three thousand miles away or
however, you know, wherever these retired Secret Service agents are, they could
tell that this was a complete breakdown at them. Well, I would say
this, and I think that I mean to to Steve's point about the the
pre work that goes into any event like this that involves a president or former
president, or you know, in someone campaigning, any dignitary like this,
that there's almost the two aspects of it. The pre planning, the pre
care that is put into securing a place, and then the immediate reactions of
what happens in the event that the gunshots are fired. The way I've seen
it described is there's a clear breakdown outside. But that body team, the
team that's directly around the president, that they did exactly what they're supposed to
do. And I want to play something just simply because I want to illustrate
that the moments after the shots were fired, and I mean, because we
have the audio here, we can hear how quickly the agents did what they're
supposed to do. Okay, so from the first gun shot to the first
get down is two seconds instructing the president in this case the dignitary to get
down, and they were on top of him immediately the way they're supposed to.
Then supposedly they get word that the shooter is down, there were no
other shots, and then they get them up and move them off, and
like you said, quickly get him to the car and get him out of
them. Well, there was also an assessment from another law enforcement person in
a federal agency that said that while you're you know what you're talking about,
looking at it sort of in a layman's point of view, but he said
that there were a number of deficiencies on how they handled him on stage.
Yes, well, for me, the thing that was so I don't know,
you see is the word of grageous. But the fact that shots were
fired, they get him down and then his head and chest are exposed like
that for how many seconds? And somebody says to me, well, he
was trying, he wanted to you know, he he was resisting them,
right, he was being defined, He was being defined. He was resisting
them trying to move him off the stage. They need to do better at
not letting that happen. And if it's because we're we're not having secret service
agents that are big enough to handle a six y three, three hundred pound
guy or whatever. I don't know how much men weigh. He's a big
guy, right, And if you don't have secret service agents, way,
I don't know. I don't know men's weight can get your can we get
yours? Well, you're strong, you're strong. You know you have bone,
you know, muscles and things and bigger bones. Wow. Anyway,
that's a deficiency in itself that they don't have agents that can move a man
that size, no matter what he's doing. Right, Well, even if
he tries to stay on that stage, you got to be able to move
him out of there. I thought, you know, his head and chests
exposed for that many seconds and did not even an agent had put his forearm
up. He was putting his forearm up and what he perceived as a as
a weak point. Yeah, and it almost looked like he had his hand
his palm out over the top of his head. So I think, well,
again, in everyone's armchair quarterback in this sure, yeah, and and
and that's what we do. And in this case, I have to lean
on you know, people that have done this many times before. And I'm
being told there were a number of deficiencies in this. And the excution was
while and I think it was Dan Bongino. I listened to and I don't
typically listen to him because he can be a little, you know, a
little off base, I mean, a little extreme for me sometimes, but
he is former Secret Service and I wanted to listen to him. He had
a very interesting take on this, and he basically said this was failure,
failure from the top down. His assessment of this. He went one step
further. He says, don't make any mistake about this just because the the
he had a word for it. But it's like in the case this former
president, just because he wasn't killed, we shouldn't be applotting. He said,
we're not. This is this is not a success for the secret exactly,
not a success. And so he kept pushing that point and then he
went down another kind of a rabbit hole about DEEI and all this other stuff.
But I mean, it was an interesting assessment from someone who used to
do the job. And he said, quote, it's not the Secret Service
I signed him for. Yeah, I think that was It's embarrassment. You
know, it's the same thing that you saw after Uvaldi. People in law
embrasement take their jobs very seriously, and when they see somebody fail at that
job, it's it's personal. Well, when the border patrol has to go
in and take command of the school, yeah, that was. That was
horrific. I'd like to be an ambassador. I think that would be the
coolest job, to be ambassador and just fly back and forth between your country.
I'd like to be ambassador of Portugal so I can goa Portugal and Spain
would be a good one. Yeah, United Kingdom, I wouldn't mind.
I would do someplace like a Aruba. Really, I didn't think of you
as a tropic. I didn't think of you as dairy weather. Oh so
you're making you're you're making a decision based on the color of my hurricanes.
Have you said, and how much time you spend in the sun. Oh
well, I can define. They have trees, I can find shade.
I just don't see you with like an umbrella right on the beach. I'm
not. I don't like them bros. They get in the way more.
I think you're more of an ambassador to Canada. I think you're more of
Scotland or something Scotland Canada or Scotland. White people are in the background of
the Republican National Convention. Of course, is the classified documents case against former
President Trump dismissed today by Judge eLink Eleene Cannon. The judge ruled that Special
counsel Jack Smith's appointment was unconstitutional, so she dismissed the case again. Some
one of the issues similar to what we've seen recently when Supreme Court cases are
dismissed for standing. This is kind of along those lines. It didn't say
anything about the actual charges that the president is facing about those classified documents,
but just that Jack Smith's appointment was unconstitutional. President Biden will sit down for
a one on one tonight with Lester Holt planned to interview, of course,
on the heels of that attempt over the week. It will air tonight at
six pm our time. NBC News and NBC at least last week they were
promoting it as unedited that they were going to do similar to what ABC News
did, which was play the whole thing beginning to end so that you can
make your own decisions about it. Steve Gregory has joined us. We're talking
more about what's going on in the aftermath of the attempt at assassination there in
Pennsylvania, and there are we talked earlier kind of a very brief idea of
what could be increased, the security that could be increased around the convention in
Milwaukee. I mean, they're already tightened down and we've seen that. It's
like the super Bowl. I mean, if you've ever you guys have been
to the super Bowl. I've never been to the super Bowl. Mone please
don't bring to the super Bowl. Do not want to talk about the super
Bowl. It's still a little oh well, anyway, the security for the
super Bowl is extremely tight too. And it's just very similar to the convey
because you know, the federal agencies have to count on the help of local
law enforcement. And I don't think people realize that there are California police agencies
that are actually helping with security at the convention, and that was already planned.
It was a mutual aid request. Troopers from the California Highway Patroller officers,
Long Beach Police Department, Fresno, I think, Bakersfield. There's some
other agents. I think they're like they're SWAT units and stuff. They're all
being shipped out there and they're already there. But you know, this is
a pretty big undertaking and it'll be interesting to see how all security from this
moment forward on any event moving forward, because one of the things I was
attempting to do over the weekend it was, you know, I hadn't even
be on the phone with some people from counter terrorism at LAPD LA County Sheriff's
Department. No one would talk. LAPD Chief choice put a blackout on the
media, and we Saturday, and we still don't know really the motivation for
that, right, I mean, only the the only thing I could think
of is that he didn't want the LAPD mired in any potential political hot potato
where everyone's in this conspiracy, and he did. I don't think he wanted
people go on and running the risk of making an analysis about faulty security or
anything. That's the only thing I can think of. I think it's just
cover your ass, yeah, because then the headline becomes lap or whatever.
Yeah, And I think that's what he was doing, and that's probably smart
on his part. But you know, in looking at how this works,
that people don't realize that outside of Washington, d C, Metro Virginia and
Baltimore, LA is the number one destination for electeds, and especially coming out
of DC, this is the number one destination Southern California. This is where
all the money's at for campaigning, and this is where all the support lies
is. I mean, we're the largest state. I mean, everyone,
this is a huge destination for electeds. So that means the law enforcement agencies
here in Southern California have got to be the best of the best, and
they are. I mean these guys, all of these guys here that that
work swat special enforcement, all these protection details, they're all at the level,
if not higher than Secret Service and they've got. I mean individual agencies
around here would have their own protection d of course LAPD, LA County sheriff.
I mean they they remember all the city council as a protection detail,
the mayor obviously, the chief, the sheriff, board of supervisors, you
know, and they all have protection details, not on the grand scale of
what you might see in a presidential situation with a motorcade and all that.
You're not going to have still an important job and roll. Yeah, you're
not going to have six or eight agents or officers that are in a helicont
primary and yeah, you're not gonna have all of that two helicopters in case
wear maths. But you have one suv and I think another suv with with
staff and that's it. Yeah. But the governor and you know, they're
they're highly trained and they are highly specialized in this kind of works. So
I wanted to get their perspective on how they prepare here. And that wasn't
even good enough. I mean in the fact that no one would talk about
it, I think speaks volumes. Yeah, the lack of I think they
are all afraid to say the wrong thing because they know there was a failure
on some pretty high levels. Well, and they weren't there and they weren't
privy to the plans. But the same thing happened at Euvaldi. When I
reached out to local here after Euvaldi and you brought that example up, and
they immediately were like, they were saying, this is what we see,
this is what we see. The deficiencies are based on what we see,
because remember, when we're looking at video, we're not looking at it tactically.
We're looking I don't even want to be connected to it. You don't
even want to be you know, l a sheriff's department mentioned in the same
sentence as Uvaldi policial. But when a swap person, anyone that's highly specialized
like that, looks at it, they're looking at it through a completely different
lens than we are, right, and that's the lens I wanted us to
find out about. So what are you going to make your cheese ball?
Are you waiting for me to have people over to meet the dog? You're
about eight months late. I know, I feel well, I had Super
Bowl you just I was out of state. There we go again, what
a super Bowl? Sorry? How would have been among friends? How security
would. We would have hugged you back into sanity. But no. What
happened to the super Bowl? I didn't even know. I've learned, but
I didn't watch it. I don't watch a super Bowl. It was three
and a half quarters of goodness. How was the security at your house?
Very tight? As a drum you have, except for the except for the
rattlesnake that made its way into the backyard this weekend. Yeah, we'll see.
You should have had better perimeter security. Yeah, I wish I did.
And I can't go now unless there's a this is the detail. You
can confirm. I do a snake sweep in the backyard before you get there.
You know what's cool is that either are a couple officers out there that
have offered to be my security detail when you come to my You don't need
security. See they said, if I go to a protest or something like
that and I need someone to watch my six, they're they're happy to do
it. Yeah, I bet they would. Yeah, I would love that.
Keep an eye on that thing, yeah, shake it, don't break
it. Jesus. How now, what's your weight, Shannon? I don't
know. I haven't gotten on a probably about one I don't know. I
haven't gotten on a scale one what what? Maybe one thirty? Are there
three numbers in it? That's your heart, bless your heart. Okay,
how much what do you guys weigh? I weigh that's a lie. That's
a lie. I weighed one sixty seven last. That's pretty good. I
identify ozempic Yeah, I identify as translender. I identify as thin. All
right, good bye, that's what counts. Bye bye, bye bye.
You've been listening to The Gary and Shannon Show. You can always hear us
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