BHS - 8A – Republican National Convention | Trump Assassination Attempt: Conspiracies

RNC going ahead as planned. After Trump is shot, conspiracy theories flood the internet creating dangerous spiral. Poop protests and political turmoil: Paris facing many messes as Olympics near.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demandfrom KFI AM six forty. And of
course, the story that's on everybody'slips around the world, by the way,
is the assassination attempt on former PresidentTrump on Saturday, in which not
only was the extraordinary lucky, butI think all of us were lucky.

(00:20):
That's my take. And I'm nota big Trump follower, by the way,
I cannot tell you how many peopleI know who are not say that
the shooters shouldn't have missed. Imean, there is that much controversy,
and there's not much hatred on bothsides that people actually wish that he had
been assassinated. And so I'm doinga little bit of history here on the

(00:43):
attempts and the ass the successful assassinationsof presidents. And I've been around since,
and I remember I was very young. I remember when JFK was assassinated.
I was very young. I wasactually home from school that day.
I wasn't feeling well and I waswatching TV and all of a sudden,

(01:03):
the news breaks in and I don'tremember who the commentator was, but I
do remember what was said. President. First of all, it was President
Kennedy had been shot at because alot of people didn't know what happened,
because almost instantly, as you know, he went to Parkland Memorial Hospital with

(01:23):
the limousine, the open air limousine, the convertible, and was there,
and of course Secret Service knows wherevera hospital is. And then the news
came out that he was shot.And then at one o'clock Eastern time or
Central time, right after one,the news came out that he had been

(01:45):
killed. And I was there forevery minute. I'll never forget. Everybody
knows who is around my age,Where were you when you heard same thing?
Well, those people are now dead. Where were you when you heard
that President Roosevelt had died? Wereyou when you heard that Pearl Harbor was
announced? Where were you when youheard nine to eleven had occurred? Everybody

(02:07):
remembers that. So I was talkingabout the assassination attempt, So Kennedy,
I was there, certainly, JeraldFord. I was there during that assassination
attempt. That was twice, bythe way, in one month, the
attempt on Gerald Ford. And Iremember that vividly, and this was I

(02:30):
mean, I remember the story againlike it was yesterday. Nineteen seventy five,
Squeaky Frome, member of Charles MansonCulled, tries to shoot Ford outside
the Capitol in Sacramento. She wasliterally in arms length away, can you
imagine. Now, came out froma crowd with her gun, fired the

(02:50):
gun, but the bullet wasn't inthe chamber and she had pulled the trigger.
So he lucked out on that one. So now literally two and a
half weeks later, Ford is outsidethe Saint Francis Hotel in San Francisco.

(03:10):
Sarah Jane Moore, a radical,fires a gun at him that misfires.
Going back nineteen fifty to Puerto Ricannationalists attempt to assassinate President Harry Truman at
Blair House because the White House wasbeing remodeled at the time. So he

(03:31):
lives at Blair House, which isacross the street, and he was staying
there. One of the gunmen iskilled. Immediately White House policeman is killed
and they missed him. Franklin Roosevelt, right in nineteen thirty three, right
after he became president, a bricklayer, unemployed, said he hated officials,

(03:53):
he hated rich people. FDR wasfairly wealthy and went ahead and fired five
times. Roosevelt unharmed. The bulletswound four people and kill Chicago's mayor.
Nineteen twelve. I'm reading about thebiography of Teddy Roosevelt right now. He

(04:14):
was running for Are you ready forthis? He's an ex president running for
the presidency again, even though hehad served almost three terms or two terms,
because the McKinley had been assassinated,much like Abraham Lincoln and Garfield and
others. And he became the president. So he did one term because it

(04:35):
was six months into McKinley's term.He ran on his own and he promised
he would not run again. Thatwas his promise, and he ran again.
Well, he promised he wouldn't serveagain, and then he decided he's
going to go. But he couldn'tget the Republican nomination because the party is
the party, and the city presidentalways gets the nomination, no matter how

(04:56):
popular anybody else is. And hewas wildly popular anyway. He ran the
Bull Moose Party, the most successfulindependent party, and he was shot making
a speech. He was shot.And let me tell you what kind of
a guy Teddy Roosevelt was. Itold you he was extraordinary, extraordinary human

(05:16):
being. He wrote forty books bythe way, hundreds of articles while he
was president. I mean he wouldread his knowledge across everything was vast.
Anyway, he was shot, andhe happened to have in his pocket some
of the speech that he was goingto give big sheaf paper, and he

(05:41):
had his eyeglass case in the samepocket. The bullet went through all of
that, entered his chest. Hereels back and continues on with his speech.
Didn't he finished the speech. Thatbullet stayed in his body his entire
life. And so now in themodern era, starting with nineteen sixty three,

(06:13):
when JFK was assassinated in November,through Ronald Reagan, through you've got
Gerald Ford. Robert Kennedy, potentialcandidate was of course killed after he won
the California primary in the Ambassador Hotel, shot in the head by a Palestinian

(06:34):
who hated rfk's position on Israel.It's and again we've had it, even
with the Secret Service, even withthe Secret Service being as careful as it
is, the fact that Donald Trumpsurvived that with this minor, minor wound

(06:56):
pure luck. If had been someonewho was a good marksman, who was
calm, had the right equipment,because clearly he went up on the roof
and was able to go up thereunobstructed, not having been seen, and
took a shot. Today we'd betalking about the assassination of another presidential candidate,

(07:18):
and the only one who had beenpresident but for Teddy Roosevelt, who
survived his I mean, I couldgo on and on, and I think
I'm going to put together a podcaston this one. What do you think,
Anne? And I'll try to dothat this afternoon, because we're dropping
another podcast tomorrow. I drop himTuesdays and Thursdays on right now on the

(07:41):
iHeartRadio app. It's the only placeyou can hear the podcast. There's already
two up there, and we're goingto drop one tomorrow and Thursday, and
I might take out the one wehave and talk about the assassination attempt here
because there is so so much tothis security and history and the politics and
the crazies who were out there.As a matter of fact, I'm going

(08:07):
to talk about that a little bitlater on. He was so lucky his
ear was grazed. Had there beena one inch or two inch difference,
it would be a very different story. It would be another successful assassination on
either a US president or a formerUS president or a prospective US president,

(08:31):
a candidate. So he was justnicked on his ear. And at the
same time, that was two daysbefore the Republican National Convention, which is
scheduled starting today. And did itaffect the convention. Well, to the

(08:52):
credit of the Republican hierarchy and toDonald Trump's credit, they're just moving forward
as if nothing happened. Now thereare some changes. Certainly, former President
Trump has changed his speech. Heis going to talk about the assassination attempt

(09:13):
now. I don't know how farhe is going to go talking about his
enemies, talking about how it isa group of people. I mean some
Republicans we're talking about senators, congresspeople are crazy arguing that it is Joe

(09:33):
Biden and or Hillary Clinton who orderedthis attempt at assassination. One of the
Congress people is calling for the immediateimpeachment or actually the immediate indictment of Joe
Biden for inciting an assassination. Imean, there's some pretty crazy people out
there, to say the least.So what's going to happ at the RNC

(10:01):
today, Well, it's going toget more attention than a convention normally would
for two reasons. Number one,Joe Biden had the Democrats have put everything
on hold the campaign. Why becausethe campaign is and it's anti Trump.
It's not even pro Joe Biden anymore. It's the attack on Trump. You
don't want Trump to be president.Look at what Trump is going to do,

(10:22):
look at the attack on democracy.Well, it can't attack at this
point. They can't attack Trump becauseof the assassination attempt. So normally where
we would be paying attention to theseads, guess what not going to happen.
So it will be all eyes onthe RNC, far more than would

(10:46):
normally happen. So how do youwatch it? Well, live stream on
a number of online platforms, includingYouTube and x A number of the networks
have announced special programming for prime timeviewing. And one hundred people are going
to talk at this thing, andit goes for three or four days.

(11:07):
I think it's three days this one. And so whoever speaks wants primetime because
some people are up there two o'clockin the morning speaking and they're talking to
four people in the audience and threeof the four are asleep. The delegates.
So you're going to see the majornetworks only carrying bits and pieces usually

(11:30):
prime, prime stuff that's going on. It's going on as if nothing happens.
Is there going to be a difference, Well, the politics are going
to be the same. You mighthave the speakers refer to thank goodness that
our future former and future president wasonly wounded, and they're absolutely right.

(11:56):
Not only was it miracle, itobviously no one deserves to be assassinated.
And they may talk about the motivation. As of right now, the shooter
a twenty year old kid, nohistory of anything relating to this level of
politics. None. They just don'tknow at all. They're looking through his

(12:18):
social media. Nothing, they're gettinghis phone records haven't come out yet.
The phone is at Quantico, atthe FBI. Nothing yet. And so
I'm going to talk about how crazythe conspiracy conspiracy theorists are. I'm going
to do that next segment. Soother than that, you're going to see

(12:39):
a normal convention. Oh yeah,maybe a little more security, you think.
So you think that security is goingto be doubled, it's going to
be tripled. You're going to seesecurity on the floor, You're going to
see security in the aisles, You'regoing to see security above you're going to
see security in front, outside,at food stands, in the parking lot.

(13:05):
Virtually every Secret Service person is goingto be assigned to this thing.
Local. And you talk about local, they're sending cops from Long Beach,
other cities around California, from statesbecause they need or want and both so
much security. It'll be by thethousands that the Secret Service doesn't have enough

(13:30):
and Milwaukee doesn't have enough cops,So reaching out to as many police districts,
as many police forces as they possiblycan. And a quick aside,
by the way, a factoid.There were four counter sharpshooters on the roof
of the building directly behind the presidentthe rally, four of them, one

(13:52):
of them taking down the shooter almostimmediately. Two of them were Secret Service
too, were local cops on theswat team, and I think it was
a local cop who actually brought downthe shooter. So you are going to
see many police forces and jurisdictions allright. So unlike other attempted assassination,

(14:15):
conspiracy or attempts that we watched overthe years, I have starting with JFK.
I was alive, I was veryvery young, but I remember vividly
the John f Kennedy assassination. Wedidn't have the Internet. There may have
been well JFK. The assassination.Conspiracies of course came out almost immediately with
the Grassy Knowle and where the president, how many people were involved, But

(14:41):
in reality that was a major conspiracyissue. No conspiracy issue about the attacks
on Gerald Ford or Ronald Reagan.But now with the Internet, guess what
we have? The conspiracy theorists havecome out in force. How is that?
Why is it such big news?Why are there so many people out

(15:03):
there that are saying this was eitherstaged or it was the Bidens who did
this and direct orders? Two reasonsOne is the Internet. That's reason number
one. Reason number two is theInternet. Now when you talk about the

(15:26):
crazies, were there are there asmany crazies out there as there have always
been? The number of conspiracy theorists, well, that's up in the air.
A lot of people would say,no, it used to be what
you see on the internet today.The only way that people who were this

(15:48):
nut wingish would be able to proclaimtheir beliefs they would have to stand on
the corner with a bullhorn. Theyweren't going to have letters to the editor.
They weren't going to have press conferencesin front of the news media.
They I think talk radio for aperiod of time was really the only way

(16:10):
that the people that are insane wouldgo on the air. When I started
in talk radio many decades ago,I'd have crazy people on. But you
get bored very quickly. What areyou gonna do with people that are nuts?
You can't talk to them, youcan't argue with them, they're so
so in believe in their beliefs.Well, today it's very different, obviously,

(16:33):
and it doesn't and it runs thegamut all the way from people who
are clearly nuts who think they're Napoleonin mental institution, to elected officials.
Representative Mike Collins, a fanatic trumpistfrom Georgia. All right, this is

(16:55):
a US congress person, wrote onx Joe Biden sent the orders to assassinate
Donald Trump. Now again, thisis the guy who sits out on the
corner with a bullhorn. Except he'sa US congressperson and he has the Internet.

(17:22):
So why is that so important?Because the number of people get their
news from the internet. Half ofall TikTok users, and we're talking in
the hundreds of millions here in theUnited States say they get all of their
news from TikTok. This is accordingto Pew, the Pew Research Center,

(17:42):
and it has to do with thefact that instantaneous news comes out before we
know anything. When you look atmajor news sources, I mean, it's
walled the wall and it's usually boringas hell, and it talks only about
the information that has come out andthat has been corroborated. We're getting a

(18:04):
knit Well, here's typically what happens. Okay, you have the commentator,
you have the anchor, say,we are getting initial stories of it has
not been corroborated yet. It isbeing reported from people who were there.
That's this happened. We have notcorroborated that story. We're going to interviews.

(18:25):
We are going to people who werethere, people who have knowledge of
security, and that is a legitimateway of reporting the news. Well,
half of all TikTok users don't listento that. You know who they listen
to. They listen to people likeRepresentative Mike Collins out of Georgia. That's

(18:48):
what they get their news sources from. And all he wrote on X is
Joe Biden sent the orders to assassinateOld Trump. Hmm, bullhorn guy.
One social media user wrote, seemsstage to me. So you have people

(19:14):
on the left saying this was staged. Trump got away and looked like he
was in trouble and it looked likean assassination attempt, but it really wasn't.
It was staged, and he gotthese minor, minor wounds and it
looked terrible, but he did itsimply for political purposes. By the way,
the question is, then, whydid a guy die right behind him?

(19:37):
Well, that's collateral damage. Butthe point is it was staged.
Okay. The other side says thatthat was politically motivated, but it was
the Democrats who ordered the assassination Bidenor Hillary. And this is part of
how they're dealing with Trump. They'reso frightened of the fact that he's going

(19:57):
to win h that they hired people. We're talking about the high end Democrats
hired people to kill Donald Trump.It's gone nuts, no surprise. It's
happened, by the way, withinminutes, within seconds of the assassination attempt.
And I'm putting together a podcast whichI hope to release either later on

(20:21):
today or tomorrow morning. Usually youdo these a few days in advance,
but we're because of what happened.I'm trying to get as much news as
I possibly can putting it together.And by the way, I'm coming to
the conclusion that it was Joe Bidenwho made the phone call to this twenty
year old kid and said, here'swhat I want you to do. I

(20:41):
want you to kill Trump because thatwill help my political career. Right,
yeah, absolutely, all right,Okay, let's finish it up with the
Olympics in Paris. That's starting inthree weeks end of the month and goes

(21:02):
through the beginning of August. Andit's in Paris, buddy. Now,
Paris is a very interesting city,to say the least. I mean,
it's the city of lights, it's, you know, a wonderful city.
Down the middle of Paris is theSane River, which is you can't think
of Paris without the saying, youcan't think of the Sane without Paris.

(21:22):
And the Seine is a toilet,literally, it is a toilet. It
is polluted, it is god awful. The one of the events, or
several of the swimming events are inthe Sane River. And let's just say
there are a few citizens of pairof Paris that are going. I don't

(21:45):
think so. The mayor offered totake a swim in the Seine. Okay,
we'll see if that comes out beforethe events. And now there's a
website with a poop emoji as themascot of the Olympics and what it's saying,
and says it's going to coordinate hundreds, if not thousands of people actually

(22:08):
pooping along the banks during her swim. It's going to be the crap Olympics.
Now we'll see if she does that. And it's typical. The problem
with Parers has is typical of allthe modern cities, and that is they
put up the Olympics, they puttogether, they build the Olympic village,

(22:33):
and then all of the venues haveto be built and it's in the billions
of dollars. And the security,of course, which is ridiculous, especially
after Munich in which eleven Israelis werekilled in nineteen eighty four Olympics. Now
that was was that the nineteen eightyfour Olympics. No, it was I
believe the nineteen eighty Olympics, andit was it was very tough. Security

(23:00):
has been ramped up like crazy.I mean tens of thousands of security and
just you know, just the gameswere expensive and they all run overboard by
the billions of dollars, and countrieshave gone broke. Montreal, the city
almost went broke. Rio de Janeiro. I mean, they spent billions of
dollars over budget. Beijing went crazy, but that wasn't the money. Beijing

(23:26):
did that to put China on theworld map, and they spent sixty billion
dollars. What ends up happening atthese Olympics is these venues are built and
they're never used after that, andthey're huge, they are impressive, and
the cities can't afford to do this. So do you know when the Olympics

(23:47):
started making money? Well, thefirst Olympics that actually made money. Matter
of fact, there only been twothat have made money, both in Los
Angeles nineteen thirty two. The coliseumwas built for that and it was a
profit center and you could walk upto a major event. Tickets cost a
quarter. You could walk in thecoliseum, buy a ticket that day,
walk in and get a great seatfor a quarter. And the nineteen eighty

(24:10):
four Olympics, Peter Euberroth, whichheaded the La Olympic Committee, and he's
the one that really sold all ofthe naming rights to the Olympics. You
had major corporate sponsors who spent millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions
of dollars. Why because two billionpeople watched the Olympics. And if you're

(24:33):
Coca Cola, you're selling to theentire world. And so he's the one
that pulled it off. There wasa profit of several hundred million dollars.
Ain't happening in Paris, didn't happenin Rio, didn't happen in Montreal.
Modern Olympics two have succeeded money wise, nineteen thirty two, nineteen eighty four.

(24:59):
And now we're gonna go for ahat trick because we'll be the first
city in the twenty twenty eight Olympicsto host the Olympics. We're gonna be
the only city ever to host threeOlympics Modern Olympics. All right, we're
done, guys. Boy, todaywent fast. There was so much to
talk about. Remember, I'm gonnado the podcast, which we're gonna release

(25:22):
either late this afternoon tonight or tomorrowmorning about the assassination because there's so much
to talk about. So we're changing. It drops Tuesday and Thursday nine o'clock,
but we may get a special onein today. That's it. We're
done. Tomorrow we start all overagain, Amy with wake Up Call,
and the rest of the crew ishere. Is Neili here tomorrow? By

(25:44):
the way, I assure we knowso okay, I know he's filling in
today for somebody or other, noidea. If not, maybe we get
Fred again. Yeah, I loveFred. Fred is here because he always.
For some reason, I get particularlyto prave when Fred is here.
I don't know why. You know, I was thinking to myself, boy,
that Bill is particularly depraved today.That explains it. Yeah, that

(26:07):
explains it all right, guys,we'll see it tomorrow. Wake Up call
at five, the rest of ushere at six KFI AM, six forty
live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Catch My Show Monday through Friday,six am to nine am, and
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