November 14, 2024 • 34 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's that time, time, time, time, Luck and load. Michael
Verie Show is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Earlier in this hearing, you said in your opening statement
that there is nothing more urgent than impeachment right now,
this is the most urgent thing we could possibly do. Well,
you know what, if you're a senior right now and
you can't afford your prescription drugs, that's more urgent than this.
If you're a manufacturer wanting to dominate the Western hemisphere
(00:38):
with the passage of the USMCA.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
That is more urgent.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
If you're a farmer who wants to open markets so
that your family can survive and thrive, that is a
lot more urgent than this partisan process. If you're a
desperate family member watching someone succumb to addiction, solving the
opioid problem probably more urgent.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Why is it the women with the least likelihood of
getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions.
Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like.
Speaker 5 (01:10):
A find.
Speaker 6 (01:30):
Is it safe to say that based off of your comments,
you're suggesting that these women at these.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Abortion rallies are ugly and overweight. Yes, what do you
see to people who think that those comments are offensive.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Be of you all get all worked up that there's
going to be some uncomfortable, chaotic moment that I'll feel
pressured from conservatives or Democrats or whomever.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I feel the judgment of history. I feel the weight
of that.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I worry that when the history books are written about
this country going down, that my name is going to
be on the board of directors here. And if this
country is going down, and if we're losing the dollar,
I am going down fighting. And I don't care if
that means fighting Republicans, Democrats, the uniparty, the leadership, the packs,
the lobbyists, a paddock. I take no lecture on asking
(02:38):
patriotic Americans to weigh in and contribute to this fight
from those who would grovel and bend knee for the
lobbyists and special interests who own our leadership, who have
called foo all you.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Want, who have followed out this town.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
And have borrowed against the future of our future generations.
I'll be happy to fund my political operation through the
work of hard working Americans ten and twenty and thirty
dollars at a time. And you all keep showing up
with the lobbyist fundraisers and see how that goes for.
Speaker 7 (03:17):
Matt Gates announced yesterday by President Trump as his Attorney
General nominee.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
And I think.
Speaker 7 (03:29):
It is probably the single most shocking thing Donald Trump
has ever done in his public life, and that's saying something.
It has excited a lot of people, it has frightened
a lot of people, and it has.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Shocked a lot of people.
Speaker 7 (03:52):
It's a very, very very complicated analysis to begin to
put this into perspective. It's not a simple one to
start with. You know, there's always the in social studies discussions,
it's known as the Overton window. Here is the window
(04:15):
within which we can talk about things. Well, if you're
trying to build a movement, if you're trying to make
America as left wing crazy as you possibly can, you
have to move the Overton window. And the progressives did that.
We went from you know, you can't tell our children
that we have to recycle and if their dady's in
(04:35):
the oil and gas business, they're a bad person. We
were fighting that to hey, we're going to go into
the school and cut your kids ween er off into
a drag queen show about books about anal sex for kindergarteners.
Speaker 6 (04:48):
Whoa.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
They moved the window.
Speaker 7 (04:53):
I think Trump with the Matt Gates decision, I think
that was his scorched Earth nuclear bomb. I think that's
a moment where he said, if anybody support me, hate me,
write about me. If anybody out there believed that this
(05:17):
was going to be like what happened in twenty sixteen,
let me show you it's not. Hold my beer. The
most rabid Republicans are looking at this and going, oh my,
(05:41):
Matt Gates is a wrecking ball. He's a disruptor. He
is a guy with no filter.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
He is a guy.
Speaker 7 (05:56):
So this is such a such a complex conversation to have.
So he'd have to be confirmed as Attorney general, and
mark my words, this won't happen until late January early February.
It will be the most rancorous confirmation hearing you've ever heard. Now,
(06:20):
between now and then, you're going to hear that he
rapes little girls or maybe little boys, and goats and
does horrible things. He's single handedly increase the temperature of
the Earth by eight degrees, and he does this, and
he does this, and he does this, and he does this.
You're going to hear all of that. That doesn't make
him guilty. It doesn't make him innocent. You're going to
(06:41):
hear every smear imaginable. They're not going to let Matt
Gates lead the Department of Justice, be the top law
enforcement officer in the country. They're not going to let
it happen. And when I say they, I don't mean
the Democrats. The Republicans are not. They won't tell you that.
(07:02):
They'll go in and leak everything they know. Book it
right here. I never make predictions. People make predictions so
they can be talked about and nobody ever looks back
as to whether they got it right or wrong. I
care about being right or wrong. My prediction, and I
hope I'm wrong. But my prediction is Matt Gates will
never be sworn in because the establishment will stake everything
(07:26):
they have on this one. I'll tell you this. Pete
heg Seth will sail through. Now, he will absolutely sail through.
How about Toolsey Gabbard. Toolsey Gabbard was put on a
watch list. Now she's a National intelligence director. Oh, we
got a show for you today, folks. But first, something
I'm very excited about. Selena Zito wrote a book. It's
(07:52):
not out yet, but you can buy it today. She
is the writer on the Trump Effect on the country.
Donald Trump loves her and she's going to be our
guests coming up next. Oh, we got so much to
get to today. What a great day to be in
talk radio.
Speaker 8 (08:17):
Car speakers, smart devices from Michael's brain, every single one
of them to your ears.
Speaker 7 (08:25):
This is the Michael Arry Show. The twenty sixteen election returns.
When President Trump won the first time, we're an absolute
shock to the system. The pollsters hadn't predicted it. Hillary
was gonna win. In fact, she's getting ready to go
out on stage and be immaculated. She's going to announce
(08:50):
We've just won. And Trump has called me and conceded.
And returns started coming in, and it was shocking, and
there was a mad scramble to understand what had happened.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Because this didn't happened in New.
Speaker 7 (09:00):
York or DC or LA, in newsrooms or corporate boardrooms.
This happened out in the hinterlands, flyover country. Nobody knew
what to make of it. And then this book emerged.
It was called The Great Revolt by Selena Zito, and
it's compelling, it's storytelling, it's wonderful. She told a story
(09:23):
about a woman who had been a sheriff's deputy. Had
she been a dispatcher and then a sheriff's deputy, and
she retired and she bought a little bakery. She always
wanted to own a bakery. And she would go into
the bakery at I don't know, three or four o'clock
in the morning, maybe earlier, and she would work there
by herself until about the time there was a certain time,
say eight o'clock, that they opened for breakfast. And at
the moment that everything she had already baked began being
(09:45):
served for breakfast, she lipped over to lunch, so she
started preparing for that. And she worked from something like
four in the morning to late in the afternoon every
single day in a rust belt city that the people
had moved out of. And she was voting for Trump,
and her reasons to vote for Trump.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Where it was like a.
Speaker 7 (10:07):
National geographic study on a species nobody had ever seen before,
and they're trying to understand it, or some tribe down
in the Amazon that hasn't seen human beings in one
hundred years, Well.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Why do they do that?
Speaker 7 (10:21):
And Selena Zito captured it. We had her on the
show after that book came out, and have read I
read the book. I've marked it up, I've kept it,
I've kept it, I've kept it, I've quoted it.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
I loved it.
Speaker 7 (10:33):
I think that Selena Zito has a real love or
people who live in flyover country, or people who live
in towns with more churches than schools, and she has
a real knack for understanding the lifeblood of communities and
how that meshes across the country in different accents and religions.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
And all that.
Speaker 7 (10:56):
And so The Great Revolt, if you haven't read it,
is a wonderful read, and I highly recommend you read it.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
It's as relevant today as it ever was.
Speaker 7 (11:05):
But she's come out with a new book called The
called Butler for Butler, Pennsylvania in July thirteenth, that you
would the untold story of the near assassination of Donald
Trump and the fight for America's heartland, and I am
thrilled about it.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Selena Zidel, welcome to the program.
Speaker 5 (11:21):
Well, thanks so much for having me on Love.
Speaker 6 (11:24):
I love that you recalled the story of Bonnie Bonnie
Yell and there were yeah, there are millions of bonn
that I kept seeing in twenty sixteen, and.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
I really put my neck out there professionally by saying, guys,
this raise is over. Y'all just don't know it yet.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
But you were the only one.
Speaker 7 (11:45):
Everybody claims they predicted it, but you did it, and
you did it not based on well, you did have
a data guy. I remember your partner and that was
the data guy. But you did it based on your
feel and boy, were you ever right?
Speaker 6 (11:57):
Well, you know I when I didn't get the true
data until after the election, you.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
Know what pulling?
Speaker 6 (12:05):
I relied on Gallops poll on American sentiments. It had
nothing to do with who was in favor and who wasn't.
It had to do about how people felt about their
lives in the direction of the country. And it was
a rolling poll of eighty two thousand people and I
read it every day and it helped keep my feet
(12:27):
on the ground when people and I would go on
social media and all the other reporters were saying one
thing that Hillary was going to win, blah blah blah,
and the Gallop pole confirmed what I believed was true,
and that was that Trump was going to win. Most importantly,
(12:48):
that our coalitions, which began to change in twenty twelve,
when Barack Obama still held on to the New Deal Coalition,
which is basically working class voters and they're pretty conservative,
but they were always Democrats, and how much they have
moved towards Trump. In twenty sixteen, they didn't vote for Romney.
(13:14):
They just stayed home. People tend to forget that Barack
Obama was the only modern president to earn less votes
in his reelect than in his original run in Pennsylvania alone,
that was three hundred thousand.
Speaker 5 (13:31):
People just didn't show up. They didn't show up for real.
Rodney didn't show up for.
Speaker 7 (13:35):
Barack Obama again, not only that he was the only
president going into election day who was underwater as a
sitting president who supposedly won the election. And that was
the reason. Now Romney was a terrible candidate, and obviously
you know that. Let me ask you a couple of
questions if you don't mind, because I know we're going
to talk about your new books.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Yeah, but I've wanted to ask you these of.
Speaker 7 (13:56):
Late regarding the Great Revolt and what you did in sixteen,
comparing that to twenty four how do you think the
country has changed from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty four,
and I mean at the level of the resident of
the citizen, not government purpose.
Speaker 6 (14:10):
So I think what began in twenty sixteen just expanded.
So the line was so in particular with the middle class.
You know, experts and other reporters.
Speaker 5 (14:23):
Always say white working class, white working class.
Speaker 6 (14:26):
And they separate them from the Hispanic working class, Asian
and black working class. Those lines are blurred, and I
saw that blurring beginning to happen in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 5 (14:38):
People don't vote along race.
Speaker 6 (14:41):
They vote along their community, their family and what's going
on in the country. And middle class voters black, white, Asian, whatever, Hispanic,
they are all sort of live.
Speaker 5 (14:54):
In the same communities.
Speaker 6 (14:55):
They you know, their kids are coached by the parents
of other kids in baseball and softball and soccer. They
stare the pew with each other every Sunday, you know,
they're involved in community events together. So they started voting
together more and more and away from elites. So while
(15:19):
elites tried to continue there's sort of this blind spot
among our cultural curators in corporations, institutions, academia, government and media,
who who still look at people through.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
The lens of race. And these voters are saying.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
We're not voting because of our you know, we're not
voting because the color of our skin.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
We're voting because butter.
Speaker 6 (15:46):
Costs too damn much, right, and it costs too much
to drive my car. But when you live in the
middle of somewhere, you got to drive thirty miles to
go here and there, and so you know.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Yeah, well, no, no, I think that's a.
Speaker 7 (16:04):
I think that's the sort of thing that people on
the coasts don't understand. And they claim to speak for people, go, oh,
the Blacks, we got them over here, and we got
the Hispanics over here, and we got the gaze. That's
not how people live their lives. That's not how people think.
It's not how people act whole with me for just
a moment. Selena Zito is our guest. She wrote the
book The Great Revolt about twenty sixteen, and she nailed it.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
She's got a new.
Speaker 7 (16:25):
Book on the way on the anniversary of Butler that
she's working on now, called Butler, The Untold Story of
the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the fight on.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
King I'm ding it and this other guy, Michael Barry.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
These are the kind of guys, you like to smacking
an ass. Selena Zito is our guest.
Speaker 7 (16:47):
She wrote the book A Great Revolt, which is a
bible for those of us who study elections and culture
and trends and the zeitgeist and what happens at a
particular time.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
She wrote the definitive book.
Speaker 7 (17:01):
About the twenty sixteen election and where the Trump supporter,
which is you, came from. And it was in places
that the coasts don't understand. And she really showed what
a talent she had for understanding things that are hard
to quantify and measure.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
And she nailed it. And I'm a fan. As you
can tell.
Speaker 7 (17:22):
She's writing a book now called Butler or Butler Pennsylvania
after what happened July thirteen, the untold story of the
near assassination of Donald Trump in the fight for America's heartland.
I want to get to the book, but I had
one other question for you about The Great Revolt. Your book,
The Great Revolt talks about the rise in You use
the word populism, and I agree with that.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Where do you think that populism is?
Speaker 7 (17:43):
Eight years later, in twenty sixteen, sorry, in twenty twenty four,
Oh tell me stronger.
Speaker 6 (17:49):
You know, I qualify it as conservative populism because populism
takes all kinds of different forms, right, There's all kinds
of different populist movements that have moved within throughout our history.
The conservative populism is a little bit different, but it
is only expanded and gotten stronger. This is a movement
(18:12):
that has changed the coalition. Where some movements don't change
a coalition, at least not significantly.
Speaker 5 (18:20):
This movement has, and.
Speaker 6 (18:23):
I suspect wherein for at least a good twenty years
of conservative populism being at the front of the boss
in the Republican coalition as opposed to always being in.
Speaker 5 (18:37):
The back of the boss. Right, it was usually the c.
Speaker 6 (18:41):
Suite suburban voters who drove all of the issues for Republicans,
and the class took a back seat. They were still there,
but they weren't as excited and energized.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
Now that has shifted.
Speaker 6 (18:57):
They're both still there, but the dominant is with the
working class in the driver's seat. The c suite. The people,
the suburban voters came back home, if you will, to
the Republican Party. And I would argue that happened before,
(19:18):
right around the time that Butler happened, and we talked
too much about a gender gap and not enough about
a marriage gap, where married women overwhelmingly.
Speaker 5 (19:29):
Voted for Trump.
Speaker 6 (19:31):
As opposed to women who don't have children and have
a secondary degree, and they voted overwhelmingly for Harris. So
the gap I don't think is gender. I think the
gap is marriage.
Speaker 7 (19:45):
It's so true, and that becomes kind of a cultural
and value based thing.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
My wife, fifty five.
Speaker 7 (19:53):
Years old, Indian immigrant, retired professional, very very doting tiger,
her mom of two teenage boys, is quite different than
the sex and the city woman you know, who's twenty six,
sleeping with five guys a month and feels fiercely independent
in an apartment she rents and hates breeders. You know,
(20:15):
it's they They may both have the same reproductive organs,
but they're very different people with very different value.
Speaker 5 (20:23):
Right, They're vastly different.
Speaker 6 (20:25):
And you know throughout history, communities that have an abundance
of married couples tend to be more stable and be more.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
Connected with each other.
Speaker 7 (20:46):
First of all, you attended the Butler rally. Why did
you attend the Butler rally?
Speaker 6 (20:51):
So you know, when you're a reporter Usually what you
start your day thinking you're going to do rarely happens
to happen by that rarely comes to fruition.
Speaker 5 (21:02):
You don't end the day doing what you thought you
were going to do that morning. And Butler covering Butler
that day turned out to be the exact same way
I started the morning. My daughter is a photo journalist.
She came with me.
Speaker 6 (21:16):
We were supposed to interview President Trump for five minutes.
Now I've interviewed Trump President Trump dozens of times, it's
never five minutes. But I said, okay, I'll do five minutes.
And she came along to do the photos. And we
brought her husband, Michael, because it was one hundred and
(21:37):
three degrees and we didn't want to look like soaken
wet rats by the time the interview happened, because when
you're at a rally, you're there forever right hours, and
so we.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
Brought him along.
Speaker 7 (21:48):
I'm going to tell you I'm not a rally person.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
It's certainly not in July.
Speaker 6 (21:54):
Yeah, And we brought him along and make him care
of the light lighting so that we wouldn't look terrible.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Didn't work.
Speaker 5 (22:00):
We were still soaking wet by like noon, so I
get a.
Speaker 6 (22:03):
Text about one o'clock from the campaign saying, hey, it
looks like.
Speaker 5 (22:09):
We're going to have to move the interview and I
was like, oh, durn it. And I was like, I
know it's not going to happen.
Speaker 6 (22:16):
They're like, no, no, no, no, We're going to do
it at after the rally. Well, I'm already in my
head thinking this isn't going to happen.
Speaker 5 (22:23):
This is just how it goes down. I understand it,
but this isn't going to happen. So about it. You know,
I'm pretty disappointed.
Speaker 6 (22:29):
I'm pretty resigned to the fact that there probably won't happen.
And then I get a text from Susie Wilde, who
is now going to be the president's chief of staff,
and she says, hey, Selena, so what would you think
about flying from Butler to Bedminster to do your interview
and we'll make sure you get back.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
I was like, wow, that's not how I saw the
day going.
Speaker 6 (22:52):
So I said, Okay, my daughter and her husband, they
have four children, we little children, made arrangements to the
other grandparents to watch them, and we proceeded to believe
that that's what was going to happen.
Speaker 5 (23:05):
And then about after he.
Speaker 6 (23:07):
Lands and he's in the back behind the stage. The
campaign advanced man his name is Michelle Picard, comes running over.
Speaker 5 (23:16):
And says, it's go time. I'm like, what do you
mean it's go time.
Speaker 6 (23:18):
I thought we were doing it after but okay, I
a dast grabbed my stuff. The three of us go
flying back to the back of the stage and we're
waiting there and I says to Michelle, so where am
I doing this interview. There's a line of people to
get their photos taken with him. He goes, you know what,
I have no idea. So he comes back and he goes,
(23:40):
we're not doing the interview now.
Speaker 5 (23:41):
He just wanted to say hi to you, So okay, again,
another thing I didn't expect to happen. So I went in.
I said hello to him.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
He asked about my grandchildren by name, so he was looking.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
Forward to the interview.
Speaker 6 (23:55):
He always says I have the best hair in America,
which I always laugh about.
Speaker 5 (24:01):
And then I have to go. I have to leave.
Speaker 6 (24:03):
He's ready to go out on stage. So Michelle Picard says,
I don't know what to do with you. I can't
get you back to the pressurizer. At this point, Why
don't you guys go in the buffer and make your
way over to the other side, because we're going to
be leaving immediately for bed Minster, So we we He
comes out, Lee Greenwood song comes on, He comes out,
(24:23):
We get photos, we're in the buffer, We make our
way to the other side. And two things happen at
the same time that never happen, and that is, he
brings a chart down like he's ross Perrot, and then
like what is that he never has a job.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
In a museum somewhere. They saved his life right, Oh my.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
God, Oh my gosh, man, he does so. If you've
ever gone.
Speaker 6 (24:46):
To a Trump rally, the relationship between him and the
audio and the people attending is very transactional. He feeds
off of them, they feed off of him, which means
they never turn away, and he never turns away either.
He may move his body way to face another section,
but he never turns his neck away.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
Shark him down.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
He turns his neck away to point to it and
pop top top tops. The bullets go right path Jos
and I see.
Speaker 7 (25:13):
The hold right there, hold right there, Hold with me
for just a moment, Lindazy toels our guest more with
her coming up.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
She was twelve. I was thirty, but it was wonderful
to have you, mister President. The Michael Arry Show. Selena
Zito is our guest.
Speaker 7 (25:31):
She wrote the book The Great Revolt about the twenty
sixteen election.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
It is it has been studied many, many, many times.
It is like the book about the nineteen sixty race
that John F.
Speaker 7 (25:46):
Kennedy's father commissioned to be writing, The Making of the President.
It's like, it's like what it takes, which Richard Richard
Van Kramer wrote, who was at Esquire at the time,
may still be about becoming president, he wrote eighty eight
in ninety two.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
You know, this is like Hunter S. Thompson in the
seventy two race.
Speaker 7 (26:07):
These books take on life of their own because among
the consultant class, you pass these books around so that
you can understand what happened. Whatever these people say happened
in the election is what gets replaced, is what the
truth gets replaced with.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
In this case, this.
Speaker 7 (26:23):
Was an incredible perception of what had happened in that election.
And our guest is Selma Zito. She's the author of it.
Her newest book she's working on, which I hope you'll
pre order today is called Butler, The Untold story of
the near assassinate assassination of Donald Trump in the fight
for America's heartland. All right, rewind us a second. You
(26:44):
were at Butler and President wants to see if he
loves your hair.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
They bring you back.
Speaker 7 (26:48):
They're not doing the interview now, and I know, you know,
you're kind of being moved around, and you feel awkward.
Can I just get somewhere in light, caul, it just
sit somewhere and they're moving you around. You're on the
riser over here. And then he's got his charts and
you hear the pop pop pop take us from there.
Speaker 5 (27:02):
I do. I hear the pop pop pop pop. I
know immediately it's a gunshot. I'm a I'm a gun owner.
And I watched the blood streak across his face. I
saw him kneel down.
Speaker 6 (27:19):
And and I didn't move and and and then I
hear four more pops, and Michelle Picard, who was his
campaign advanced press guy, literally tackles me to the ground once,
like get down, get down, And I'm four feet five
(27:41):
feet away from him. I see him, I see the
Secret Service come around him. I can hear the entire
conversation he is having with them, because I'm right there,
and and you know, it's established that he's okay, it's
established that it's clear to move, and and uh, and
(28:04):
they're they're.
Speaker 5 (28:04):
Saying, Okaymistry President, We're going to move.
Speaker 6 (28:06):
And he keeps on saying, I need to put my
shoes on. So what I could see from there when
they when they when they gathered around him in a
protective stance, one of the agents had knocked his shoes
off of them and.
Speaker 5 (28:18):
He did not want to. He was pretty stubborn about it.
Speaker 6 (28:21):
They were like, let's go, and because I need to
put my shoes on, and the one I could hear it,
the email agent say okay, fine, and and then uh,
they bring him past me down the steps, walks past me,
his his hat, his Make America Great hat.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
One of the agents had it in his hand yet
his hand and.
Speaker 6 (28:45):
Just as they come around right in front of like,
I'm laying on the ground right below the steps, and uh,
it falls and just lands right in front of me,
very slowly. It was very eerie. The next morning I
get on these I did not go to Bedminster, but
the next morning he called me bright and early, and
before I could even get the word hello out, it's Selena,
(29:07):
Are you okay?
Speaker 5 (29:08):
Is your daughter okay? Is your son in Lae? I'm like, well, okay.
Speaker 6 (29:12):
And then we have very detailed it's in the book,
conversation about.
Speaker 5 (29:17):
God, about faith.
Speaker 6 (29:20):
And he ended up calling me a total of seven
times that day, and I've interviewed him four times since then.
Speaker 5 (29:27):
At different rallies.
Speaker 6 (29:28):
And so the book takes you through Butler, the sort
of forty two miles stretch where I believe that Trump
regained his mojo in February twenty twenty three when he
showed up in East Palestine, the tiny Ohio village that
was rocked by the trained derailment and then subsequent control
burn and nobody else did. And how these forty two
(29:53):
miles all across our country, whether it's in between Butler
and East Palestine or anywhere else, are the people that
were going to decide this election and their lives mattered,
And how Butler is intertwined throughout this election, and how
I understood and kept saying that He's going.
Speaker 5 (30:12):
To win Pennsylvania despite everyone telling me again it wasn't
going to happen.
Speaker 7 (30:18):
Oh sorry, I just I turned off my mic so
I wouldn't interrupt you. That's uh, well, it was just
great storytelling. You tell stories well, whether it's the written
word or the spoken word. I want to go back
to that moment where he's down. You know, we've heard
the sort of undercover audio of them trying to get
(30:40):
him out of there, and.
Speaker 8 (30:41):
He wants his shoes on. Trump has. I say, it's instinctive.
He has an instinctive, kind of atavistic the way animals
can sniff power and strength and fear and all that
he has.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
I think he understood, even at that moment where he's
just been shot.
Speaker 7 (30:58):
I think he understood that walking around with no shoes
on doesn't look strong, and he is strong, and I
think he I don't think he consciously thought it. I
think it was just it's his instincts. I've said this
for years, is there's never been anyone in politics with
the instincts the manhass Yeah.
Speaker 6 (31:15):
We talk about that.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
It's in the book.
Speaker 6 (31:17):
We talk about why he said fight, you know, and people.
Speaker 5 (31:23):
Did not hear.
Speaker 6 (31:25):
But he's before he said fight and before he got up,
he said USA twice and people didn't hear that.
Speaker 5 (31:32):
At least I don't think they do. I haven't seen
that report.
Speaker 6 (31:36):
Yeah, so you know, it's a it's a really there's
some very powerful conversations between the two of us, not
only there, but also a week later in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
than Johnstown, then Indiana, Pennsylvania. Uh and and each time
(31:58):
he opens up a little more of out about the event.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
I remember seeing him.
Speaker 6 (32:04):
I had decided early on I wasn't going to go
to the conventions. I never learned anything new at conventions.
I learned much more if I sit at a bar
and watch people watch the conventions. And besides that, I'm old.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
I can't do it anymore. But I.
Speaker 7 (32:23):
Hate crowds, and I hate crowds in that kind of environment. Anyway,
I'm sorry, good.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Yeah, yeah, I know age whatever.
Speaker 6 (32:32):
But I remember watching him come out, and I bet
everybody can conjure this image up as well. When he
came out that first night, and the.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
Look on his face was very difficult to decipher.
Speaker 6 (32:43):
That look because it was emotional, but it wasn't. It
was gratitude, but it wasn't, it was it was There
were so many ways you can interpret that look on
his face.
Speaker 5 (32:55):
And I saw that look and I said, Oh my god,
I know, I I know that. Look, that's the one
that's on my face. I know exactly.
Speaker 6 (33:04):
And I wasn't even shot at I mean, I wasn't
the target. But I know exactly how he feels in
this moment, and you don't know how.
Speaker 5 (33:14):
I still haven't.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
I personally still.
Speaker 5 (33:17):
Have not dealt with it in a proper way. I
know someday I will some day I cried, but I
have not cried yet.
Speaker 7 (33:24):
Yeah. I speak or something called Camp Hope, which is
part of the PTSD.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Foundation of America in Houston, and I.
Speaker 7 (33:30):
Talk a lot to veterans who were in war about
that trauma. What happens to the brain during trauma, and
what you witnessed there was trauma. It's not war, but
it is trauma, and how our brain pushes that back
and slowly we deal with it.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Hold with me for a moment, Selena Zto.
Speaker 7 (33:46):
I know we told you we'd be respectful of your time,
but I do want to get into the failures that
allowed our president to be shot and almost killed.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
The book is called Butler, The.
Speaker 7 (33:58):
Untold Story of the your Assassination of Donald Trump in
the Fight for America's Heartland. Pre order it today. More
with Selena coming out
Speaker 2 (34:08):
M
It's that time, time, time, time, Luck and load. Michael
Verie Show is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Earlier in this hearing, you said in your opening statement
that there is nothing more urgent than impeachment right now,
this is the most urgent thing we could possibly do. Well,
you know what, if you're a senior right now and
you can't afford your prescription drugs, that's more urgent than this.
If you're a manufacturer wanting to dominate the Western hemisphere
(00:38):
with the passage of the USMCA.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
That is more urgent.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
If you're a farmer who wants to open markets so
that your family can survive and thrive, that is a
lot more urgent than this partisan process. If you're a
desperate family member watching someone succumb to addiction, solving the
opioid problem probably more urgent.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Why is it the women with the least likelihood of
getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions.
Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like.
Speaker 5 (01:10):
A find.
Speaker 6 (01:30):
Is it safe to say that based off of your comments,
you're suggesting that these women at these.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Abortion rallies are ugly and overweight. Yes, what do you
see to people who think that those comments are offensive.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Be of you all get all worked up that there's
going to be some uncomfortable, chaotic moment that I'll feel
pressured from conservatives or Democrats or whomever.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I feel the judgment of history. I feel the weight
of that.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I worry that when the history books are written about
this country going down, that my name is going to
be on the board of directors here. And if this
country is going down, and if we're losing the dollar,
I am going down fighting. And I don't care if
that means fighting Republicans, Democrats, the uniparty, the leadership, the packs,
the lobbyists, a paddock. I take no lecture on asking
(02:38):
patriotic Americans to weigh in and contribute to this fight
from those who would grovel and bend knee for the
lobbyists and special interests who own our leadership, who have
called foo all you.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Want, who have followed out this town.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
And have borrowed against the future of our future generations.
I'll be happy to fund my political operation through the
work of hard working Americans ten and twenty and thirty
dollars at a time. And you all keep showing up
with the lobbyist fundraisers and see how that goes for.
Speaker 7 (03:17):
Matt Gates announced yesterday by President Trump as his Attorney
General nominee.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
And I think.
Speaker 7 (03:29):
It is probably the single most shocking thing Donald Trump
has ever done in his public life, and that's saying something.
It has excited a lot of people, it has frightened
a lot of people, and it has.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Shocked a lot of people.
Speaker 7 (03:52):
It's a very, very very complicated analysis to begin to
put this into perspective. It's not a simple one to
start with. You know, there's always the in social studies discussions,
it's known as the Overton window. Here is the window
(04:15):
within which we can talk about things. Well, if you're
trying to build a movement, if you're trying to make
America as left wing crazy as you possibly can, you
have to move the Overton window. And the progressives did that.
We went from you know, you can't tell our children
that we have to recycle and if their dady's in
(04:35):
the oil and gas business, they're a bad person. We
were fighting that to hey, we're going to go into
the school and cut your kids ween er off into
a drag queen show about books about anal sex for kindergarteners.
Speaker 6 (04:48):
Whoa.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
They moved the window.
Speaker 7 (04:53):
I think Trump with the Matt Gates decision, I think
that was his scorched Earth nuclear bomb. I think that's
a moment where he said, if anybody support me, hate me,
write about me. If anybody out there believed that this
(05:17):
was going to be like what happened in twenty sixteen,
let me show you it's not. Hold my beer. The
most rabid Republicans are looking at this and going, oh my,
(05:41):
Matt Gates is a wrecking ball. He's a disruptor. He
is a guy with no filter.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
He is a guy.
Speaker 7 (05:56):
So this is such a such a complex conversation to have.
So he'd have to be confirmed as Attorney general, and
mark my words, this won't happen until late January early February.
It will be the most rancorous confirmation hearing you've ever heard. Now,
(06:20):
between now and then, you're going to hear that he
rapes little girls or maybe little boys, and goats and
does horrible things. He's single handedly increase the temperature of
the Earth by eight degrees, and he does this, and
he does this, and he does this, and he does this.
You're going to hear all of that. That doesn't make
him guilty. It doesn't make him innocent. You're going to
(06:41):
hear every smear imaginable. They're not going to let Matt
Gates lead the Department of Justice, be the top law
enforcement officer in the country. They're not going to let
it happen. And when I say they, I don't mean
the Democrats. The Republicans are not. They won't tell you that.
(07:02):
They'll go in and leak everything they know. Book it
right here. I never make predictions. People make predictions so
they can be talked about and nobody ever looks back
as to whether they got it right or wrong. I
care about being right or wrong. My prediction, and I
hope I'm wrong. But my prediction is Matt Gates will
never be sworn in because the establishment will stake everything
(07:26):
they have on this one. I'll tell you this. Pete
heg Seth will sail through. Now, he will absolutely sail through.
How about Toolsey Gabbard. Toolsey Gabbard was put on a
watch list. Now she's a National intelligence director. Oh, we
got a show for you today, folks. But first, something
I'm very excited about. Selena Zito wrote a book. It's
(07:52):
not out yet, but you can buy it today. She
is the writer on the Trump Effect on the country.
Donald Trump loves her and she's going to be our
guests coming up next. Oh, we got so much to
get to today. What a great day to be in
talk radio.
Speaker 8 (08:17):
Car speakers, smart devices from Michael's brain, every single one
of them to your ears.
Speaker 7 (08:25):
This is the Michael Arry Show. The twenty sixteen election returns.
When President Trump won the first time, we're an absolute
shock to the system. The pollsters hadn't predicted it. Hillary
was gonna win. In fact, she's getting ready to go
out on stage and be immaculated. She's going to announce
(08:50):
We've just won. And Trump has called me and conceded.
And returns started coming in, and it was shocking, and
there was a mad scramble to understand what had happened.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Because this didn't happened in New.
Speaker 7 (09:00):
York or DC or LA, in newsrooms or corporate boardrooms.
This happened out in the hinterlands, flyover country. Nobody knew
what to make of it. And then this book emerged.
It was called The Great Revolt by Selena Zito, and
it's compelling, it's storytelling, it's wonderful. She told a story
(09:23):
about a woman who had been a sheriff's deputy. Had
she been a dispatcher and then a sheriff's deputy, and
she retired and she bought a little bakery. She always
wanted to own a bakery. And she would go into
the bakery at I don't know, three or four o'clock
in the morning, maybe earlier, and she would work there
by herself until about the time there was a certain time,
say eight o'clock, that they opened for breakfast. And at
the moment that everything she had already baked began being
(09:45):
served for breakfast, she lipped over to lunch, so she
started preparing for that. And she worked from something like
four in the morning to late in the afternoon every
single day in a rust belt city that the people
had moved out of. And she was voting for Trump,
and her reasons to vote for Trump.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Where it was like a.
Speaker 7 (10:07):
National geographic study on a species nobody had ever seen before,
and they're trying to understand it, or some tribe down
in the Amazon that hasn't seen human beings in one
hundred years, Well.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Why do they do that?
Speaker 7 (10:21):
And Selena Zito captured it. We had her on the
show after that book came out, and have read I
read the book. I've marked it up, I've kept it,
I've kept it, I've kept it, I've quoted it.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
I loved it.
Speaker 7 (10:33):
I think that Selena Zito has a real love or
people who live in flyover country, or people who live
in towns with more churches than schools, and she has
a real knack for understanding the lifeblood of communities and
how that meshes across the country in different accents and religions.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
And all that.
Speaker 7 (10:56):
And so The Great Revolt, if you haven't read it,
is a wonderful read, and I highly recommend you read it.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
It's as relevant today as it ever was.
Speaker 7 (11:05):
But she's come out with a new book called The
called Butler for Butler, Pennsylvania in July thirteenth, that you
would the untold story of the near assassination of Donald
Trump and the fight for America's heartland, and I am
thrilled about it.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Selena Zidel, welcome to the program.
Speaker 5 (11:21):
Well, thanks so much for having me on Love.
Speaker 6 (11:24):
I love that you recalled the story of Bonnie Bonnie
Yell and there were yeah, there are millions of bonn
that I kept seeing in twenty sixteen, and.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
I really put my neck out there professionally by saying, guys,
this raise is over. Y'all just don't know it yet.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
But you were the only one.
Speaker 7 (11:45):
Everybody claims they predicted it, but you did it, and
you did it not based on well, you did have
a data guy. I remember your partner and that was
the data guy. But you did it based on your
feel and boy, were you ever right?
Speaker 6 (11:57):
Well, you know I when I didn't get the true
data until after the election, you.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
Know what pulling?
Speaker 6 (12:05):
I relied on Gallops poll on American sentiments. It had
nothing to do with who was in favor and who wasn't.
It had to do about how people felt about their
lives in the direction of the country. And it was
a rolling poll of eighty two thousand people and I
read it every day and it helped keep my feet
(12:27):
on the ground when people and I would go on
social media and all the other reporters were saying one
thing that Hillary was going to win, blah blah blah,
and the Gallop pole confirmed what I believed was true,
and that was that Trump was going to win. Most importantly,
(12:48):
that our coalitions, which began to change in twenty twelve,
when Barack Obama still held on to the New Deal Coalition,
which is basically working class voters and they're pretty conservative,
but they were always Democrats, and how much they have
moved towards Trump. In twenty sixteen, they didn't vote for Romney.
(13:14):
They just stayed home. People tend to forget that Barack
Obama was the only modern president to earn less votes
in his reelect than in his original run in Pennsylvania alone,
that was three hundred thousand.
Speaker 5 (13:31):
People just didn't show up. They didn't show up for real.
Rodney didn't show up for.
Speaker 7 (13:35):
Barack Obama again, not only that he was the only
president going into election day who was underwater as a
sitting president who supposedly won the election. And that was
the reason. Now Romney was a terrible candidate, and obviously
you know that. Let me ask you a couple of
questions if you don't mind, because I know we're going
to talk about your new books.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Yeah, but I've wanted to ask you these of.
Speaker 7 (13:56):
Late regarding the Great Revolt and what you did in sixteen,
comparing that to twenty four how do you think the
country has changed from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty four,
and I mean at the level of the resident of
the citizen, not government purpose.
Speaker 6 (14:10):
So I think what began in twenty sixteen just expanded.
So the line was so in particular with the middle class.
You know, experts and other reporters.
Speaker 5 (14:23):
Always say white working class, white working class.
Speaker 6 (14:26):
And they separate them from the Hispanic working class, Asian
and black working class. Those lines are blurred, and I
saw that blurring beginning to happen in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 5 (14:38):
People don't vote along race.
Speaker 6 (14:41):
They vote along their community, their family and what's going
on in the country. And middle class voters black, white, Asian, whatever, Hispanic,
they are all sort of live.
Speaker 5 (14:54):
In the same communities.
Speaker 6 (14:55):
They you know, their kids are coached by the parents
of other kids in baseball and softball and soccer. They
stare the pew with each other every Sunday, you know,
they're involved in community events together. So they started voting
together more and more and away from elites. So while
(15:19):
elites tried to continue there's sort of this blind spot
among our cultural curators in corporations, institutions, academia, government and media,
who who still look at people through.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
The lens of race. And these voters are saying.
Speaker 6 (15:38):
We're not voting because of our you know, we're not
voting because the color of our skin.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
We're voting because butter.
Speaker 6 (15:46):
Costs too damn much, right, and it costs too much
to drive my car. But when you live in the
middle of somewhere, you got to drive thirty miles to
go here and there, and so you know.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Yeah, well, no, no, I think that's a.
Speaker 7 (16:04):
I think that's the sort of thing that people on
the coasts don't understand. And they claim to speak for people, go, oh,
the Blacks, we got them over here, and we got
the Hispanics over here, and we got the gaze. That's
not how people live their lives. That's not how people think.
It's not how people act whole with me for just
a moment. Selena Zito is our guest. She wrote the
book The Great Revolt about twenty sixteen, and she nailed it.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
She's got a new.
Speaker 7 (16:25):
Book on the way on the anniversary of Butler that
she's working on now, called Butler, The Untold Story of
the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the fight on.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
King I'm ding it and this other guy, Michael Barry.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
These are the kind of guys, you like to smacking
an ass. Selena Zito is our guest.
Speaker 7 (16:47):
She wrote the book A Great Revolt, which is a
bible for those of us who study elections and culture
and trends and the zeitgeist and what happens at a
particular time.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
She wrote the definitive book.
Speaker 7 (17:01):
About the twenty sixteen election and where the Trump supporter,
which is you, came from. And it was in places
that the coasts don't understand. And she really showed what
a talent she had for understanding things that are hard
to quantify and measure.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
And she nailed it. And I'm a fan. As you
can tell.
Speaker 7 (17:22):
She's writing a book now called Butler or Butler Pennsylvania
after what happened July thirteen, the untold story of the
near assassination of Donald Trump in the fight for America's heartland.
I want to get to the book, but I had
one other question for you about The Great Revolt. Your book,
The Great Revolt talks about the rise in You use
the word populism, and I agree with that.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Where do you think that populism is?
Speaker 7 (17:43):
Eight years later, in twenty sixteen, sorry, in twenty twenty four,
Oh tell me stronger.
Speaker 6 (17:49):
You know, I qualify it as conservative populism because populism
takes all kinds of different forms, right, There's all kinds
of different populist movements that have moved within throughout our history.
The conservative populism is a little bit different, but it
is only expanded and gotten stronger. This is a movement
(18:12):
that has changed the coalition. Where some movements don't change
a coalition, at least not significantly.
Speaker 5 (18:20):
This movement has, and.
Speaker 6 (18:23):
I suspect wherein for at least a good twenty years
of conservative populism being at the front of the boss
in the Republican coalition as opposed to always being in.
Speaker 5 (18:37):
The back of the boss. Right, it was usually the c.
Speaker 6 (18:41):
Suite suburban voters who drove all of the issues for Republicans,
and the class took a back seat. They were still there,
but they weren't as excited and energized.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
Now that has shifted.
Speaker 6 (18:57):
They're both still there, but the dominant is with the
working class in the driver's seat. The c suite. The people,
the suburban voters came back home, if you will, to
the Republican Party. And I would argue that happened before,
(19:18):
right around the time that Butler happened, and we talked
too much about a gender gap and not enough about
a marriage gap, where married women overwhelmingly.
Speaker 5 (19:29):
Voted for Trump.
Speaker 6 (19:31):
As opposed to women who don't have children and have
a secondary degree, and they voted overwhelmingly for Harris. So
the gap I don't think is gender. I think the
gap is marriage.
Speaker 7 (19:45):
It's so true, and that becomes kind of a cultural
and value based thing.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
My wife, fifty five.
Speaker 7 (19:53):
Years old, Indian immigrant, retired professional, very very doting tiger,
her mom of two teenage boys, is quite different than
the sex and the city woman you know, who's twenty six,
sleeping with five guys a month and feels fiercely independent
in an apartment she rents and hates breeders. You know,
(20:15):
it's they They may both have the same reproductive organs,
but they're very different people with very different value.
Speaker 5 (20:23):
Right, They're vastly different.
Speaker 6 (20:25):
And you know throughout history, communities that have an abundance
of married couples tend to be more stable and be more.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
Connected with each other.
Speaker 7 (20:46):
First of all, you attended the Butler rally. Why did
you attend the Butler rally?
Speaker 6 (20:51):
So you know, when you're a reporter Usually what you
start your day thinking you're going to do rarely happens
to happen by that rarely comes to fruition.
Speaker 5 (21:02):
You don't end the day doing what you thought you
were going to do that morning. And Butler covering Butler
that day turned out to be the exact same way
I started the morning. My daughter is a photo journalist.
She came with me.
Speaker 6 (21:16):
We were supposed to interview President Trump for five minutes.
Now I've interviewed Trump President Trump dozens of times, it's
never five minutes. But I said, okay, I'll do five minutes.
And she came along to do the photos. And we
brought her husband, Michael, because it was one hundred and
(21:37):
three degrees and we didn't want to look like soaken
wet rats by the time the interview happened, because when
you're at a rally, you're there forever right hours, and
so we.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
Brought him along.
Speaker 7 (21:48):
I'm going to tell you I'm not a rally person.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
It's certainly not in July.
Speaker 6 (21:54):
Yeah, And we brought him along and make him care
of the light lighting so that we wouldn't look terrible.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Didn't work.
Speaker 5 (22:00):
We were still soaking wet by like noon, so I
get a.
Speaker 6 (22:03):
Text about one o'clock from the campaign saying, hey, it
looks like.
Speaker 5 (22:09):
We're going to have to move the interview and I
was like, oh, durn it. And I was like, I
know it's not going to happen.
Speaker 6 (22:16):
They're like, no, no, no, no, We're going to do
it at after the rally. Well, I'm already in my
head thinking this isn't going to happen.
Speaker 5 (22:23):
This is just how it goes down. I understand it,
but this isn't going to happen. So about it. You know,
I'm pretty disappointed.
Speaker 6 (22:29):
I'm pretty resigned to the fact that there probably won't happen.
And then I get a text from Susie Wilde, who
is now going to be the president's chief of staff,
and she says, hey, Selena, so what would you think
about flying from Butler to Bedminster to do your interview
and we'll make sure you get back.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
I was like, wow, that's not how I saw the
day going.
Speaker 6 (22:52):
So I said, Okay, my daughter and her husband, they
have four children, we little children, made arrangements to the
other grandparents to watch them, and we proceeded to believe
that that's what was going to happen.
Speaker 5 (23:05):
And then about after he.
Speaker 6 (23:07):
Lands and he's in the back behind the stage. The
campaign advanced man his name is Michelle Picard, comes running over.
Speaker 5 (23:16):
And says, it's go time. I'm like, what do you
mean it's go time.
Speaker 6 (23:18):
I thought we were doing it after but okay, I
a dast grabbed my stuff. The three of us go
flying back to the back of the stage and we're
waiting there and I says to Michelle, so where am
I doing this interview. There's a line of people to
get their photos taken with him. He goes, you know what,
I have no idea. So he comes back and he goes,
(23:40):
we're not doing the interview now.
Speaker 5 (23:41):
He just wanted to say hi to you, So okay, again,
another thing I didn't expect to happen. So I went in.
I said hello to him.
Speaker 6 (23:50):
He asked about my grandchildren by name, so he was looking.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
Forward to the interview.
Speaker 6 (23:55):
He always says I have the best hair in America,
which I always laugh about.
Speaker 5 (24:01):
And then I have to go. I have to leave.
Speaker 6 (24:03):
He's ready to go out on stage. So Michelle Picard says,
I don't know what to do with you. I can't
get you back to the pressurizer. At this point, Why
don't you guys go in the buffer and make your
way over to the other side, because we're going to
be leaving immediately for bed Minster, So we we He
comes out, Lee Greenwood song comes on, He comes out,
(24:23):
We get photos, we're in the buffer, We make our
way to the other side. And two things happen at
the same time that never happen, and that is, he
brings a chart down like he's ross Perrot, and then
like what is that he never has a job.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
In a museum somewhere. They saved his life right, Oh my.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
God, Oh my gosh, man, he does so. If you've
ever gone.
Speaker 6 (24:46):
To a Trump rally, the relationship between him and the
audio and the people attending is very transactional. He feeds
off of them, they feed off of him, which means
they never turn away, and he never turns away either.
He may move his body way to face another section,
but he never turns his neck away.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
Shark him down.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
He turns his neck away to point to it and
pop top top tops. The bullets go right path Jos
and I see.
Speaker 7 (25:13):
The hold right there, hold right there, Hold with me
for just a moment, Lindazy toels our guest more with
her coming up.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
She was twelve. I was thirty, but it was wonderful
to have you, mister President. The Michael Arry Show. Selena
Zito is our guest.
Speaker 7 (25:31):
She wrote the book The Great Revolt about the twenty
sixteen election.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
It is it has been studied many, many, many times.
It is like the book about the nineteen sixty race
that John F.
Speaker 7 (25:46):
Kennedy's father commissioned to be writing, The Making of the President.
It's like, it's like what it takes, which Richard Richard
Van Kramer wrote, who was at Esquire at the time,
may still be about becoming president, he wrote eighty eight
in ninety two.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
You know, this is like Hunter S. Thompson in the
seventy two race.
Speaker 7 (26:07):
These books take on life of their own because among
the consultant class, you pass these books around so that
you can understand what happened. Whatever these people say happened
in the election is what gets replaced, is what the
truth gets replaced with.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
In this case, this.
Speaker 7 (26:23):
Was an incredible perception of what had happened in that election.
And our guest is Selma Zito. She's the author of it.
Her newest book she's working on, which I hope you'll
pre order today is called Butler, The Untold story of
the near assassinate assassination of Donald Trump in the fight
for America's heartland. All right, rewind us a second. You
(26:44):
were at Butler and President wants to see if he
loves your hair.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
They bring you back.
Speaker 7 (26:48):
They're not doing the interview now, and I know, you know,
you're kind of being moved around, and you feel awkward.
Can I just get somewhere in light, caul, it just
sit somewhere and they're moving you around. You're on the
riser over here. And then he's got his charts and
you hear the pop pop pop take us from there.
Speaker 5 (27:02):
I do. I hear the pop pop pop pop. I
know immediately it's a gunshot. I'm a I'm a gun owner.
And I watched the blood streak across his face. I
saw him kneel down.
Speaker 6 (27:19):
And and I didn't move and and and then I
hear four more pops, and Michelle Picard, who was his
campaign advanced press guy, literally tackles me to the ground once,
like get down, get down, And I'm four feet five
(27:41):
feet away from him. I see him, I see the
Secret Service come around him. I can hear the entire
conversation he is having with them, because I'm right there,
and and you know, it's established that he's okay, it's
established that it's clear to move, and and uh, and
(28:04):
they're they're.
Speaker 5 (28:04):
Saying, Okaymistry President, We're going to move.
Speaker 6 (28:06):
And he keeps on saying, I need to put my
shoes on. So what I could see from there when
they when they when they gathered around him in a
protective stance, one of the agents had knocked his shoes
off of them and.
Speaker 5 (28:18):
He did not want to. He was pretty stubborn about it.
Speaker 6 (28:21):
They were like, let's go, and because I need to
put my shoes on, and the one I could hear it,
the email agent say okay, fine, and and then uh,
they bring him past me down the steps, walks past me,
his his hat, his Make America Great hat.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
One of the agents had it in his hand yet
his hand and.
Speaker 6 (28:45):
Just as they come around right in front of like,
I'm laying on the ground right below the steps, and uh,
it falls and just lands right in front of me,
very slowly. It was very eerie. The next morning I
get on these I did not go to Bedminster, but
the next morning he called me bright and early, and
before I could even get the word hello out, it's Selena,
(29:07):
Are you okay?
Speaker 5 (29:08):
Is your daughter okay? Is your son in Lae? I'm like, well, okay.
Speaker 6 (29:12):
And then we have very detailed it's in the book,
conversation about.
Speaker 5 (29:17):
God, about faith.
Speaker 6 (29:20):
And he ended up calling me a total of seven
times that day, and I've interviewed him four times since then.
Speaker 5 (29:27):
At different rallies.
Speaker 6 (29:28):
And so the book takes you through Butler, the sort
of forty two miles stretch where I believe that Trump
regained his mojo in February twenty twenty three when he
showed up in East Palestine, the tiny Ohio village that
was rocked by the trained derailment and then subsequent control
burn and nobody else did. And how these forty two
(29:53):
miles all across our country, whether it's in between Butler
and East Palestine or anywhere else, are the people that
were going to decide this election and their lives mattered,
And how Butler is intertwined throughout this election, and how
I understood and kept saying that He's going.
Speaker 5 (30:12):
To win Pennsylvania despite everyone telling me again it wasn't
going to happen.
Speaker 7 (30:18):
Oh sorry, I just I turned off my mic so
I wouldn't interrupt you. That's uh, well, it was just
great storytelling. You tell stories well, whether it's the written
word or the spoken word. I want to go back
to that moment where he's down. You know, we've heard
the sort of undercover audio of them trying to get
(30:40):
him out of there, and.
Speaker 8 (30:41):
He wants his shoes on. Trump has. I say, it's instinctive.
He has an instinctive, kind of atavistic the way animals
can sniff power and strength and fear and all that
he has.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
I think he understood, even at that moment where he's
just been shot.
Speaker 7 (30:58):
I think he understood that walking around with no shoes
on doesn't look strong, and he is strong, and I
think he I don't think he consciously thought it. I
think it was just it's his instincts. I've said this
for years, is there's never been anyone in politics with
the instincts the manhass Yeah.
Speaker 6 (31:15):
We talk about that.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
It's in the book.
Speaker 6 (31:17):
We talk about why he said fight, you know, and people.
Speaker 5 (31:23):
Did not hear.
Speaker 6 (31:25):
But he's before he said fight and before he got up,
he said USA twice and people didn't hear that.
Speaker 5 (31:32):
At least I don't think they do. I haven't seen
that report.
Speaker 6 (31:36):
Yeah, so you know, it's a it's a really there's
some very powerful conversations between the two of us, not
only there, but also a week later in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
than Johnstown, then Indiana, Pennsylvania. Uh and and each time
(31:58):
he opens up a little more of out about the event.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
I remember seeing him.
Speaker 6 (32:04):
I had decided early on I wasn't going to go
to the conventions. I never learned anything new at conventions.
I learned much more if I sit at a bar
and watch people watch the conventions. And besides that, I'm old.
Speaker 5 (32:18):
I can't do it anymore. But I.
Speaker 7 (32:23):
Hate crowds, and I hate crowds in that kind of environment. Anyway,
I'm sorry, good.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Yeah, yeah, I know age whatever.
Speaker 6 (32:32):
But I remember watching him come out, and I bet
everybody can conjure this image up as well. When he
came out that first night, and the.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
Look on his face was very difficult to decipher.
Speaker 6 (32:43):
That look because it was emotional, but it wasn't. It
was gratitude, but it wasn't, it was it was There
were so many ways you can interpret that look on
his face.
Speaker 5 (32:55):
And I saw that look and I said, Oh my god,
I know, I I know that. Look, that's the one
that's on my face. I know exactly.
Speaker 6 (33:04):
And I wasn't even shot at I mean, I wasn't
the target. But I know exactly how he feels in
this moment, and you don't know how.
Speaker 5 (33:14):
I still haven't.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
I personally still.
Speaker 5 (33:17):
Have not dealt with it in a proper way. I
know someday I will some day I cried, but I
have not cried yet.
Speaker 7 (33:24):
Yeah. I speak or something called Camp Hope, which is
part of the PTSD.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Foundation of America in Houston, and I.
Speaker 7 (33:30):
Talk a lot to veterans who were in war about
that trauma. What happens to the brain during trauma, and
what you witnessed there was trauma. It's not war, but
it is trauma, and how our brain pushes that back
and slowly we deal with it.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Hold with me for a moment, Selena Zto.
Speaker 7 (33:46):
I know we told you we'd be respectful of your time,
but I do want to get into the failures that
allowed our president to be shot and almost killed.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
The book is called Butler, The.
Speaker 7 (33:58):
Untold Story of the your Assassination of Donald Trump in
the Fight for America's Heartland. Pre order it today. More
with Selena coming out
Speaker 2 (34:08):
M
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