Violence, threats hang over Trump-Harris race after turbulent weekend
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00:00With me here in the studio now is Douglas Herbert, our international affairs commentator who's also
00:03looking into this story today. And Doug, look, this is the second time in just nine weeks that
00:08a gunman has got within shooting range of Donald Trump. Is it a failure by the Secret Service?
00:14Could tighter security have stopped this from happening, do you think?
00:17Look, there's no such thing as absolute airtight security when you're protecting,
00:21whether it's a president or anyone else. Now, the Secret Service is sort of jammed if they do,
00:28and they're jammed if they don't hear. You could argue on the one hand that a very eagle-eyed
00:32agent did spot this rifle barrel jutting out of the bushes in the tree line of this golf course.
00:39In fact, he spotted that, did prevent a possible assassination of a presidential candidate.
00:45But by the same token, this is the same Secret Service that signally failed to prevent another
00:51assassin's bullet from grazing Donald Trump's ear back in July. And the images from that attempt,
00:58you'll remember, have become almost part of the iconography. They're now iconic in images of the
01:03bloodied ear, the bloodied face, the raised fist pumping, the chants of fight, fight, fight.
01:10They've become almost, you know, literally rocket fuel in his campaign on the trail.
01:15Now, there's a sense here at the Secret Service, following that July attempt on Donald Trump's life,
01:22they bolstered his protective detail. What does that mean? They added additional agents.
01:26They also stepped up the sort of real-time intelligence on the ground wherever Donald
01:30Trump is. But it's important to remember, and the Palm Beach County Sheriff pointed this out,
01:35he's the one who gave a press conference yesterday, basically saying he doesn't have
01:39the same, no one has the same protective details, the president. The president, if he had been
01:44golfing on that course, Joe Biden, the entire course would have been surrounded, encircled by
01:49Secret Service agents. The questions now that the Congress is focusing on, it's the investigation
01:54that was launched in the wake of the July attempt, is how many resources does the Secret Service
02:00need? Do they have what they need? How do you give them what they need? How do you better train?
02:03They had taken steps to bolster Trump's security detail. Some are even arguing Trump should have
02:08just as many agents protecting him as Joe Biden, the president, and their people for or against
02:14that. But the fact of the matter is he has a different protective detail than Joe Biden has.
02:19But we also see that the Secret Service, in a sense, is going to come under criticism regardless,
02:24because this was, once again, how did the guy get that close within 400, 500 yards of Donald Trump?
02:30And look, Kamala Harris on X saying that violence has no place in America. There is, though, an
02:35argument, isn't there, Doug, that America has a long history of violence, including political
02:41violence. Do you think it's getting worse? It's not necessarily what I think. You have a lot of
02:47longtime American political commentators, observers, people who've covered the American
02:51political scene for decades, who essentially are saying that violence is a staple of American life,
02:57society, and its political culture. And if you look at American history, it's a long rap list
03:02of assassinations, of riots, of pogroms, of lynchings. The list goes on and on. When you
03:10ask whether or not it's getting worse, what we do know is that access to guns remains extremely easy
03:16in America, the proliferation of guns, the background checks are still not tight enough
03:23in many states, and you still have open carry in many states. People cannot just get the guns but
03:28can just carry them visible to all on the streets. You have a situation right now with a polarization.
03:36I know it's an overused word. It's become cliched, but I'm going to use it again. The polarization
03:41literally meaning the sharp divisions both across ideological and political divides
03:47are stoking more of what I've already said is this subculture, if you will, this almost reflex,
03:52this violent reflex in America that sure, you see it everywhere. Sure, we have tragedies of these
03:57kinds and shootings here in Europe. You seem to see them more frequently, and they are with
04:02sometimes greater intensity and vendetta driven in the United States. So if you ask me if it's
04:08getting worse right now, there are a lot of people that say between the easy access to the guns and
04:13the worsening polarization, these are accidents waiting to happen. Plus, you have a candidate
04:17such as a Donald Trump, who many accuse of inciting the very violence that is now haunting him. It's
04:24like a boomerang coming back to hit him in the face. So it's a very volatile cocktail. Are there
04:29easy answers in this political climate? No, but I'll tell you one thing, the Secret Service or
04:33anyone trying to prevent these things have their work cut out. These are unpredictable, and they're
04:37happening with greater violence and greater frequency. Just a final question for you, Doug,
04:42we know the polls say this is an extremely close race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
04:48Do you think this is going to have an impact? Put it this way. Donald Trump, as I have already said,
04:53has essentially, forgive the bad pun, has weaponized the last assassination attempt on him
05:00with those iconographic images of the bloody deer in face and all of that. He's turned them
05:05into campaign fuel, in a sense. And what we're seeing after the second apparent episode attempt
05:12on his life, we're seeing Republicans not just rally around Trump, but we also see the finger
05:16pointing in the blame game beginning, where they're essentially blaming. Some are out openly
05:21insinuating that this is staged. You look at social media, that the Democrats are to blame,
05:25that this is a setup. They're all out to get Trump. And Trump himself at a campaign fundraiser
05:30blasted out the statement that, you know, there are people in this world who will do whatever it
05:34takes to stop us. So it's them against us. It's that theme of division again, stoking,
05:40rallying his base, using this as a rallying cudgel, if you will. And right now, you have
05:46Republicans basically saying that the Democrats are essentially to blame. Not all. Some are saying
05:52this. The Democrats are essentially to blame for endangering Trump's life. How? By blaming him for
05:57being a threat to democracy. You might say that's convoluted reasoning, but that's what's going out
06:01there. And a lot of people out there are inclined to be receptive to that type of message, that
06:06somehow this is a democratic plot to not just bring down the Republican Party, but to bring
06:10down Donald Trump. Douglas Herbert, thank you very much.