Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning. I want to tell you a story this
fine Monday morning. I hope you had a good weekend.
I was nine years old the first time I saw
President Kennedy's motorcade in Dallas. It wasn't in person, it
wasn't on a TV screen on a live broadcast, but
an old VHS tape in my uncle's living room. My
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parents had sent me up there for the summer because
I was getting in some sort of trouble or other.
As always, he was a cop, a detective to be specific,
and the kind of man who carried the weight of
every unsolved case he ever touched, not because he was obsessed,
but because some stories just don't let go. That day,
he popped the tape into the player, handed me a
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stack of faded newspaper clippings, and said, you like puzzles, right?
This one never sat right with me. We sat there
for hours, pausing, rewinding, watching again. I asked questions, and
the morbidity of it all was just disturbing, he answered everyone,
though calmly, patiently, like someone who had gone over it
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one hundred times in his own head. Watch that guy,
he'd say, pointing to a secret Service agent lagging behind
see how he reacted too late. Look at the window
up there. They had intel about it, you know. Listen
to the radio, traffic garbled. No one knows who's in charge.
He didn't talk about Grassy Knolls. He didn't push conspiracies,
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he didn't need to. His focus was on the failures,
what should have been seen, what should have been secured,
what should have never been allowed to happen, and above
all else. He drove one point into me. It wasn't
the shooter that killed Kennedy. It was everyone who didn't
take the threat seriously enough before the shooting ever started.
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It stuck with me and then came Butler. Pennsylvania, July thirteenth,
twenty twenty four, Donald J. Trump, forty fifth president of
the United States and the leading candidate to be the
forty seventh, walked on stage at a campaign rally. Flags waved,
families cheered, America showed up, and then the shots rang out.
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A rooftop shooter, a twenty year old who got into position,
raised a rifle and started firing. One Trump supporter was
killed and the competour family has never been the same.
Two more were wounded, and President Trump bloodied. Defiant narrowly
survived a shot that grazed his head by less than
an inch. I sat there watching it unfold, just like
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I had as a kid with that supruder tape. Only
this time it wasn't history, it was happening live, and
it hit me truly. We had learned absolutely nothing. The
Secret Service, the same agency that vowed to never let
another Dley Plaza happen, had failed yet again. No rooftop security,
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no aerial surveillance well wasn't in the hands of a
novice who had trained under a drone for an hour.
No perimeter lockdown, rangefinders being used, squawk on the walkie
talkies and communicate that said that they had lost the
assailant multiple times but were aware of his impending presence.
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No active threat engagement before the rally ten days notice
without notifying anyone, even the local police department. There were
warnings all over the place. There were red flags. Don't
even get me started on the quick response team, the perimeter,
even allowing the President to jump up, no matter how
strong he may or may not be, These are red flags.
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There were protocols, but they were not followed. And yet,
just like in sixty three, everyone Froze. A Senate inquiry
has now confirmed that every American with common sense who
already knew it wasn't just one oversight, it was a
chain of them. Communications were a mess, intel was ignored,
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Local law enforcement wasn't looped in. The rooftop was visible,
the shooter had history. The system just broke. And here's
where I get angry, not as a voter, but as
a citizen. We've sent men to the moon, we can
see a car door from a satellite. We spend billions
on presidential protection, and yet we left a rooftop wide
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open at a Trump rally because someone somewhere decided he
wasn't worth the full detail. Would that have happened for Obama,
for Biden, for Clinton? We both know the answer. Donald
Trump didn't get Secret Service coverage. He got something just
enough to check the box. And now, instead of demanding resignations,
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the DC elite are asking us to move on. Well,
I won't because I remember watching that film with my uncle,
and I remember what he said, once a man takes
a bullet, everything after is excuses unless you fix what
is broke. Trump didn't flinch, he didn't run. He came
back stronger, fist rays defiant, unbroken, not because he's reckless,
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but because he knows what he represents to millions of us,
that someone still fights for the forgotten. And we saw
it in Butler, in the blood and the chaos, in
the crowd that's sang the national anthem as shots rang out,
America remembers, and we're done with the excuses. This isn't
just about Trump. It's about what happens next. Because if
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no one's fired, if no one is held accountable, then
this country is telling every would be assassin. You might
get lucky next time. That's not a republic, that's a
powder keg. We either fix this now or we bury
another leader. And I promise you this. My uncle may
have given me a tape and a folder, but what
he really handed me was a warning. And if the
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men at the top don't listen this time, the next
folder passed down won't be full of theories. It'll be
an obituary. Let's not do that again, folks, Thanks for
watching the Donut for remy show. We'll see you tonight
at seven o'clock. Olivia and I have the calm and
we will see you then.