Sam Stein: Violence Is Not the Answer

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To learn more, go to onlinmba.illinois.edu. Hello and welcome to a bonus edition of the Borg Podcast.
I'm your host, Tim Miller. I got today my newest colleague, our managing editor, Sam Stein Weeks where decades happen.
I'm kind of sick of those weeks. We've had a few of those lately.
But I want to just start by getting the facts out of what we know about the shooting at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania yesterday. The rally was taking place about an hour north of Pittsburgh.
A bullet grazed Trump's ear before he went down and was surrounded by Secret Service and then stood up. And I'm sure if you're listening, you've seen the pictures of him fist pumping and shouting, fight, fight, fight.
One audience member is dead. Two more critically injured.
The shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, age 20 of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. He was on a rooftop about 150 yards from the rally.
Not much is known about Crooks. As we tape, he seems to be a rare 20-year-old with with not much social media presence voter records show that he made a single 15 donation to a liberal pack on biden's inauguration day but then registered as a republican that september so more reporting is going to be coming i assume on you know what exactly was the motivations that that inspired this would be assassin so you know the the FBI is calling it an assassination attempt on Trump's life.
So with those facts, Sam, initial reactions, thoughts? Well, I mean, my first thought was probably like everyone's, when they saw it come over the transit, which was just shocking. You sort of do a double take when you see the first news clips.
And for me, it was some tweet. Someone said, like, you know, Trump's being, you know, held down by Secret Service and then a follow-up on being rushed out.
And I just couldn't really process what it actually meant. And then I signed on and then found out.
And my first reaction was just sort of like dumbfounded shock, right? And then you try to figure out what exactly is going on. And then when it sort of seeps in, and this happened for me at least, you know, several minutes later, you begin to sort of think about, okay, if this is what we imagine it to be, what are the ripple effects of this? And simply put, there's just like, nothing good comes to

this, obviously. It's horrifying, both the act itself and then to contemplate what follows the

act. I was also mad, frankly, that something like this could happen.
Mad that Secret Service

apparently had some sort of terribly, unbelievably tragic lapse of protocol. Mad that

Thank you. apparently had some sort of terribly, unbelievably tragic lapse of protocol.
Mad that anyone could possess a gun at that age and use it with this type of apparent motivation. Should you use a parent around everything? And then sort of mad at the reaction too.
I mean, not unexpected because I think our political system is kind of structured in a way that incentivizes pretty shitty reactions to these types of things but like just watching it kind of transpire was a little bit disheartening too yeah i want to get into the reactions um but there are other people to be mad at before we get to the reactions obviously mad at that at that kid i guess you can't call him a kid that young man who is uh creating a lot of a lot of problems that doesn't help anything violence doesn't help anything we've been living through a time of increased political violence you know we already had enough 1968 parallels with the convention conversation we've been having over the last two weeks and it does feel like we've been ported back to to 1968 in a lot of. And upset also, because it ties to the reactions post-Trump.

But, you know, I also had a feeling of anger at all of the steps that have got us here.

And, you know, the lack of grown-ups in the room.

And I think that there are a lot of people to blame on that. But, you know, look, I mean, we've been living in a time of increased political violence for a while now there's a scaly shooting of the baseball field in 17 obviously the attack at speaker pelosi's house january 6th kavanaugh and whitmer failed plots against them i'm sure i'm forgetting out some trump giffords yeah giffords i guess that's kind of before the trump era but yeah giffords uh you know trump from the stage you, shouting at, you know, telling people, knock the hell out of people.
And like, we've had a long period where this has been happening and where, you know, people have continued to kind of stoke the anger on that. So, you know, again, was this guy radicalized by any specific thing? Like, we don't know any of that yet.
But there have been a lot of opportunities for grownups to say, okay, enough of this. And those opportunities have been missed.
And they've been missed from people that are critics of Trump, but also people around Trump who have been stoking this sort of thing, too. Obviously, we can like severe caution, right? We don't know the motivation.
We just don't know enough to say why this. Anybody that like starts randomly shooting people like has some level of mental health problems, right? I think we can confidently say that.
Like literally, it's like the Reagan guy was trying to impress Jodie Foster, you know? So like you can really get out over your skis on like what motivated this guy and then you find out that it's something totally weird. Yeah, deranged psychopaths right like i think that's a i think we could objectively say that but i do agree with like everything you said and it's not because you know you invited me graciously onto the podcast but uh i feel like you know we it's easy when you're in the moment to say well this is a really bad moment right like i'm sure you know if my if your parents or my parents came on they'd'd be like, you know, the 60s were just, like, infinitely worse than this.
And, like, we actually had, like, serious assassinations and MLK and RFK and all that stuff. And, yeah, granted.
But for me, at least, you know, just sort of, like, living in the kind of instantaneous media bubbles that we exist in, it's like when you watch it all play out and you see sort of the incentive structure for politicians to play up this violent rhetoric and machismo stuff and delegitimizing and stigmatizing their opponents in ways, you can start to see the ingredients in real time for this type of climate. Now, I'm not saying the climate is directly associated with the shooting because we just don't know yet, but the climate's bad.
We can just objectively say the climate's not great. And I do think, frankly, we can be equivocal about it.
We can say, well, one side is just as bad as the other. But I do think this is a Trump era phenomenon.
I really do. He has capitalized on this in a way that no recent politician at least in my mind has done it and he's done it successfully and it's created a model for a lot of other people to replicate and i think a lot of people have replicated it frankly and that i do think has happened someone on both sides yeah well no and i think that again like going back to the grown-ups like this is the thing that about all this.
It's just like this stuff wasn't happening during the Obama-Romney campaign. No.
The temperature of the water was just a lot lower. I remember the big Romney-Obama fight was over.
Romney dabbled a tiny bit in birtherism, and people freaked out. Birtherism these days seems quaint, right? It's it's totally different well the one ad that the one obama super pack ran that was pretty bad i kind of accused romney of of like being responsible for the deaths but like even so it's just like that kind of ad like wouldn't even really stand out now like the temperature has just gotten a lot hotter and there are very few people that have been in the arena that are saying wait a minute let's let's try to like dial this down a little bit right and obviously you know of course as the incitements to violence have happened on the right like you know we we had the after the january 6th moment like we had a period of time where that was being condemned and like now you know the the people that stormed the capital are hostages and heroes right so like again like they're like the entire water in which we're swimming in is just a lot hotter.
And that's why when I look at these reactions, I want to shout out a couple good ones and bad ones. There was some Colorado state rep, so that we can be fair here.
Like you said, this is the last thing. We need a sympathy for the devil right now.
Oh, God, I saw that one. Yeah, that was bad.
My favorite was from Andy Kim. I want to shout him out.
He's a Democratic rep in New Jersey running for Senate. It was very long, so I'm only going to read part of it, but it's all good.
We'll put the link to his thread in the show notes.

But he started here.

When Lincoln was shot, he wore a coat embroidered with one country, one destiny.

I've turned to those four words to help me process this moment.

This assassination attempt was one of the worst events I've seen in our democracy.

It feels like we're on a country unmoored.

It's not just that our divisions have grown so wide, but our willingness to allow contempt to accompany us. It's not just a disrespect that we see towards one another.
It's a deeper disregard and disgust of one another. We're losing touch with the understanding that we're all part of something bigger than us.
As those four words of Lincoln, one country, one destiny remind us the commonality we share runs deep and cannot be forgotten or dismissed, choosing to unite instead of in sight. It does not mean that we dismiss the magnitude of our differences, but it compels us to be cautious and precise about our next steps, our words, our actions, and this unbelievably precarious moment.
We can just sit on that one for a second. I don't know if there's much to add to it, but for a politician, that's good.
That is thoughtful, and and he's exactly right and i think that the precarious moment element of this is very important because we are in a very precarious moment and we've been warning here and i i've been i kind of had a low level of ominous dread about this period between now and the fall and you know how people feel about this election and i had that sense of dread. And this has just exacerbated it to such a degree that we really need people to almost go overboard and kind of dialing it back for a bit.
Andy Kim's an interesting guy, incredibly thoughtful congressman. I think the reason we're focusing on Andy right now is because he's rare.
A lot of democrats are saying the right thing we should say that they're like saying that the bit of the perfunctory no no that's fair that's fair but andy's i think the reason i don't know why you picked it up but my guess is the reason you picked it out is because there's a level of depth to it that i think you don't really often see with political reactions or at least introspection too right right? I totally agree with you. We need to sort of, the cliches call our better angels, but what does it actually look like in this current climate? I saw someone propose that Biden and Trump do a joint press conference.
That's never going to happen. It's never going to happen.
What do you do to actually effectuate that? And also, does the incentive structure actually exist? Because when I was thinking about this last night, when I was trying to muster up some sort of story for the bulwark, I kept coming back to this idea that it's actually scarier now. What happens, the sort of unknowns of the next week or two are what actually really do frighten me.
And I guess the question for you, Tim, is like, okay, what can Andy Kim do to like achieve what he wants here? The online MBA from Geese College of Business at the University of Illinois is an empowering experience, a global community, extraordinary supportive colleagues, and top faculty. To learn more, go to onlinemba.illinois.edu.
The Democrats are going to have to figure out, and by the Democrats, I mean the politicians, but also media that Democratic and left-wing consumers watch. I have to figure out how to talk about this in a way that does not exacerbate people's rage at the other side.
right? Like, and, and talk about it in a way that says hey you know what i liked about the indy kim statement is that you do not have to diminish the differences right between the two sides you don't have to dismiss the magnitude of the differences you don't have to all of a sudden say oh donald trump is not you know proposing does not have soft authoritarian aspirations based on his proposals you don't have to stop saying that but it now has to be you know delivered within the context of

you know kind of a more obama in spirit that's like out of a day i was just thinking that yeah

like it sounds obama-ish yeah you have to figure out how to way to do that's complicated it's hard

you know to express disagreement with the other side without the disdain and democrats and and

Let's complicated. It's hard, you know, to express disagreement with the other side without the disdain.
And Democrats and left-wing media folks have to do that. And that's, you know, that's going to be challenging, I think.
Well, that's the thing. I've been watching a lot of Democrats this morning and last night sort of grapple with this tension point that you're getting at, which bluntly is they do think Trump's a threat to democracy.
Well, some of them do, I guess, according to Ezra Klein's report on the podcast. Maybe putting aside Ezra's sources, some of them do think.
And how do you properly portray that threat? How do you communicate around that threat while being very cognizant of the fact that people could, you know, take what you're saying and become sort of radicalized by it, for lack of a better word. And I guess the thing that was happening last night and this morning was like, you know, obviously a lot of Republicans were very angry at Democrats for portraying Trump this way and saying that that had been sort of the stew from which this guy, this 20-year-old kid, man, young man, acted.
First of all, we don't know his motivation, so I thought that was wildly premature. But secondly, I guess the question is like, okay, well, what are you supposed to do? How do you talk about Trump and democracy if you legitimately believe he's a threat? People do need to legitimately.
Some of the stuff like Scott Jennings was on CNN being like, this is your fault for saying it's a threat to democracy. It's it's like okay well he he incited an attack on the capitol right so like you have to talk about that like that existed that happened and then the republicans re-nominated him like on the list of people that i'm upset at includes the republican senators that didn't convict him you know because that was an opportunity to turn down the temperature in this country when you convicted the guy for something that he's rightly impeached for and insurrection against the country so i think that it wouldn't stop our problem with guns in this country it wouldn't stop the problem with the randomly mentally ill people like there still could be random assassination attempts but the stew that we're in would be different if this was you know whatever ron de santis versus kamala harris it just like it just would be and like that was the adult thing to do and they didn't do it and this is how it ties i think that what the democrats have to do is figure out how to present as attempting to which is like in the spirit of what joe biden actually did try to do most of the time when he's president like attempting to take down the temperature attempting to be grown-ups attempting to work with the other side and saying we're here to solve problems like we're not here you know to incite a civil war like that's not what we're doing and i think that this republican reaction to that to the extent that there's a chance to you know once the dust settles offers offer a little bit of contrast like shows how that might be possible you have mike collins from georgia republican saying joe biden sent the orders obviously deeply irresponsible and based on nothing.
J.D. Vance, the leading candidate, presumed to be Trump's VP.
You never know what's Trump, but he wrote, today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.
That rhetoric led directly to Trump's attempted assassination. And now we head into a convention where obviously, you know, the speakers are going to be, you know, doing some bloody shirt waving, I think, which that wasn't the case.
But I think that that seems very likely. So I don't think that there's a ton of hope that the Republican response to this is going to be to turn down the temperature.
And so I think that the question is whether there's a thermostatic response to that on the left or whether, you know, it's an opportunity to try to present something that's more in the broader tradition. You could tell by the way your voice intonation kind of trailed off there.
That was is very low for that. Again, I once said, people would ask me on these stupid panels, say, I'll let you reply, but I'm going to now reply to your reply to my skeptical intonation.
On these panels, people are always like, what's it going to take to chill this out? Like, it's a very popular question that I get on panels. All the time, yeah.
And like, my answer before answer before 2020 was like really like we need a serious you know outside event to shake everybody up and realize it's time to be grown-ups again and like this was all kind of frivolous some of this partisan infighting and then covet happened and a million people died and like it got a million times worse so i no longer have any hope that outside events are going to help, you know, kind of calm, you know, the increasing. Yeah.
I get that question a lot. And I basically like, I don't think there's, I don't know.
It's very hard to imagine a combination of factors that can give us the type of more utopian political system that we all hope for. This is why I was nervous last night.
Because the next week, you couldn't ask for a worse set of events to happen the week after this. The convention is not the place for...
Dialing the rhetoric down. Dialing the rhetoric down.
You're not going to get a convention that's like 2004 Barack Obama. It's just not going to happen.
And the Vance tweet specifically to me was like a huge warning sign. That guy's got whatever you think of J.D.
Vance, right? The guy has his thumb on the pulse of the MAGA movement. He knows where it is.

He's playing to it all the time.

He's smart.

And for him to just jump to that, to me,

was not just a signal of where everyone is,

but it was a signal for everyone to get there.

And I think next week's just going to be absolute...

Unfortunately, I worry it's going to be bedlam.

And I think that what's interesting here, and I don't have any real hope for it. It's like Trump could play a role.
I mean, he could if in a normal universe, Trump could come out today and be like, say something that's Trumpian, but also like tries to get the rhetoric a little bit down, but I'm not hopeful for it. Biden came out last night.
I thought it was fine. He's not going to say too much

because he never gets ahead of things. He doesn't want to speculate.
But look, I think this is where the worry around Biden's capacities as a candidate and as a president, this is where they're manifested. I feel like the old Joe Biden four or five years ago would have given us a real stem winder of a speech that called people to come together and made all those rhetorical points.
He'll do it, but I think people think of him in a more diminished way now, and I don't think it's going to have as much resonance. And frankly, I just don't see any way this kind of gets toned down at all before the election.
No, I mean, and you're in this environment, and I guess I will say Trump has sent a couple bleats I don't have in front of me, and they were not as bad as it could have been. I totally agree with that.
I read them very nervously, and I was like, oh, it's not so bad. And so, you know, we go to the convention, we see what happens.
We shouldn't have lower expectations for Trump. Any normal politician who went through this, if you just look at what Steve Scalise said, what Gabby Gifford said, what said what you know other victims of political violence uh who's what reagan said and there's a great thing from reagan's diary going around that he wrote about how he was praying for hinkley and so you know like there is a bar that that you would expect for a responsibility bar you know it's hard to kind of see that happening at the rnc convention this week i'd love to be surprised because to your point if we end up in a situation where just like the reality of the situation is one side is saying they tried to kill our leader like they tried to assassinate him because they hate you and the other side is saying he is going to end the republic as we know it i had elizabeth newman my friend the domestic extremism on about de-escalating a couple of months ago on this podcast like it doesn't take elizabeth newman to know that that is an environment that is ripe for additional violence and that's something we got to be really i think deeply concerned about oh 100 i'm going to milwaukee it's going to be be safe yeah i mean i i don't want to be i don't want to joke, 100%.
I'm going to Milwaukee. It's going to be safe.
Yeah. I mean, I don't want to be, I don't want to joke about it.
Like I'm nervous a little bit. Yeah.
I'm going to Chicago and that's going to be incredibly chaotic too for the democratic convention. Yeah.
And also this is sort of a secondary point, but like if you're like a smart, thoughtful human being, who's thinking about like a career in public service and you like kind of just want to like you know be normal and like create normal friendships and working partnerships and shit like why the fuck would you want to go into this line of business at this point this is nuts like this is not fun people here are not normal it's it's insane i've said this for a while, particularly on the Republican side, but I think it's going to start having it on the Democratic side.

There's a supply and demand to this. If there's not a good supply of candidates, it's hard to have good leaders.

Well, you read Andy Kim.

Yeah, Andy Kim is part of the good supply.

I want to do the political implications. I just want to say at the beginning of this, this attempted assassination assassination happened less than 24 hours ago that's a weird sentence to say out loud and so like we don't know shit all right like there's certain things that we know and i want to focus on things that we that we know and um you know we'll take it from there so there's new polling this this morning cbs had trump winning by two points essentially in every swing state nbc had trump winning by two points nationally unchanged from April.
So we have a static race still. To me, I think the most obvious thing to think about, you know, again, who knows how this looks in November, but right now we're going to be looking at a period where the enthusiasm, they talk about enthusiasm gap sometimes between the two parties.
There's going to be an enthusiasm chasm between a republican party that feels like they need to get righteous vengeance on behalf of trump and a democratic party that is currently unsure if they have confidence in their candidate to even do the job you know i think that is something that we can talk about that we know is going to be is an issue uh as we head into the fall like much more than a way than some people are like now trump has won and it's like i don't you know i don't know how many swing voters are changing their vote based on based on this like we'll learn from polls and focus groups the next few weeks but the enthusiasm thing i think we know is an outgrowth of this at least for for now so like look i i think to like basically be like, the elections over, first of all, I think

you should hold off a little bit and kind of reassess, like how you view the world, because not everything is strictly about electoral politics. That being said, I think you're right that like, I mean, the enthusiasm stuff has already been incredibly pronounced.
You see it in every poll. This is obviously both a byproduct of Trump rallying his people prior even to this, and then also of Joe Biden.
Every single poll since the debate, but prior to the debate, was Democratic enthusiasm was incredibly low, historically low. This just is going to feed into that.
I think the post-convention bump will be pretty big. I think it will spark another, it will be so reinforced, we're going to spark another wave of panic about Biden and his ability to win the election, which will then cause more Democratic infighting around whether Biden should be on the ticket.
And then it's just going to go round and round and round. That said, I mean, you read the polls, like everything about this race has been static.
I forget who was maybe it was franklin's or something like that's like you know we'll just come back to this place where it jumps up too this i think this is one of the things where people after the debate were like expecting biden to tank and when he didn't like hey see you were wrong i'm like i never expected biden to take we're in a very we're very polarized country and and right there are a lot of people out there there already were before the debate and now there are more who say they don't approve of joe biden but they're voting for him anyway so you know what i mean like that's a common that's a common element so i you know like this is why i also just want to caution trying to look into a crystal ball i said this a bunch in the last two weeks it's almost it's almost like eye-rolly to say like we're in unprecedented fucking times like this is very unusual like we yeah we do not have there's no you can't look back at passing campaigns and you know there's somebody online i figured it was it was like teddy roosevelt in 1912 when he was shot and said you can't kill a bull moose and then somebody else replied and they're like Woodrow Wilson won that election so like you know okay like we just don't we're in unprecedented times and so we don't really know and I can imagine a scenario where in some ways like having a very rabid convention so I'm even skeptical of your bounce I'm just saying we don't. I'm just saying we don't know.
I'm just saying we don't know. I could possibly see, again, I think the enthusiasm and people who maybe had been soft Trump supporters being thrust into his arms.
I think that feels certainly that's happening. The response among these double haters, like these small groups, they might see a really rabid MAGA base and be like, Oh man, that's, that's a little scary.
You know what I mean? Like we just don't exactly know. Tim, the more interesting question is not like for me.
And I'm curious what you think is more interesting question is not like what Trump and Republicans do with this. I think we sort of know how they're, they're going to rally around him.
We get that. And we, and we generally think that the convention is going to be more like, as you said, righteous vengeance for Trump.
I think the more interesting question is how, if you're a Democrat, if you're in the Biden campaign, what you do about this. First of all, you got these persistent problems with your party.
They're not going away. Maybe this dulls the conversation, obviously dulls the conversation.
But I don't i don't know what do you do like do you try to play up the sort of like um obama circle 2004 rhetoric like is that is that the play like do you lay low like i don't know i mean if biden could do that yeah i would say that this is the moment for the red states and blue states speech but i don't think that's like in his bag of tricks at this point right so yeah i mean i that's what i would like to see from the democrats i think that you need to figure out a way to message that this election remains critically important and remains passionate but we need to have leaders that you know govern for the whole country and that that's what joe biden tried to do and that jo Joe Biden, there's a reason why there's a ton of new investment going into red states and go and campaign in those areas and try to demonstrate that they're concerned about the policy proposals that are in Project 2025, but still want to be the ones that unite the country. And while the other side is probably what we expect

doing a lot more of what J.D. Vance is doing and trying to stoke more tension.
That's really tough.

It's tough to pull out. It was right in Obama's wheelhouse to do this.
Is it in Joe Biden and

Kamala Harris's? I don't know. We can see.
Is it in some of the other speakers that speak at the

convention, at the Dem convention in a month? Maybe. There'd be some people that think, no, the right thing to do is that the Democrats should fight fire with fire on this and like blame Trump for the rhetoric.
And I don't know that victim blaming is the answer here. And I think that that is both politically and practically a dubious path.
So I think that the trying to take the air out and be the grownups and be the ones that care. I mean, there was people told me at the beginning of this race that the Biden message was going to be, he cares about people like you while Trump cares about himself.
They didn't execute that message. They haven't yet.
They tried. They tried it.
It just didn't, they didn't continue on. Yeah.
But that seems like the best one. Yeah.
But trying to focus on the first part of that, that seems like the smart idea. It idea it's just again to our point that we keep coming back to it's like one it's not clear that biden can do but two like i'm maybe i'm letting him off the hook a little too much here but like does the incentive structure does the media ecosystem exist for that to even matter materially like you know yeah i just don't know me neither i think the acting like that it's not a very complicated question and a big challenge you know would be trying to pull the wool over people's eyes like i just i think that there's no doubt that this complicates the democrats already complicated messaging this fall i don't think that that means it trumped everyone but like i i think that i think you just have to be clear-eyed about this is minor relative to the larger message, but there is something that, and I know this is something to your heart, but guns, right? 20-year-old owning an AR is like, I don't know, maybe that could be part of the messaging here.
It's like, maybe these guns should not be in the hands of 20-year-olds. Yeah, I think so, man.
I've been banging the drum on Democrats talking about this for a while. I think it's mostly a consensus issue.
I don't think people want 20-year-olds, 18-year-olds, high school and college kids to have ARs unless they are professional police or in the military or at a gun range. And it's a locked gun.
I don't think that's an extreme view. I think that's a winning view.
Once again, we have a 20-year- year old that does this 20 year old boys shouldn't like be able to like fire off fucking eight rounds in under a minute you know like that's just it's not it's not smart it's not practical and i think the best part of what biden said the press conference the other day was was talking about how the republicans want to control girls not guns is that the one message that's going to win them the election or whatever no but i do think it's something that they should talk about and they can talk about it and like uh like okay you know what are some practical things like we want this to stop what are some practical things can happen we said at the top like this was a secret service disaster you know richie torres a democrat was was tweeting about this like it is you know i think that there should be a review the system is. We want our political opponents to be protected.
There's no place for violence. We also don't think that teenagers should have, you know, assault rifles.
Like I think that those are absolutely good things to talk about. Yeah, and they tried to do, they tried, I think, to have this as a component of the bill that they did end up passing as a strip from the bill.
But like, it's, it is crazy. It's just crazy.
I mean, I, and it's, you say you think it's a consensus issue. It is a consensus.
I mean, if you trust the polls, it's a huge consensus issue. Again, I, I'm with you again.
I don't, I don't think it's like going to be the predominant message from this, nor probably should it be, because I think there's huge questions about discourse and how we're conducting our politics. but like i think it has to be in the mix like you got to talk about you know the troubled 20 year old often white men not always often white men having access easy access to ars is just is nuts to me and there's got to be at least an attempt to try to limit that this isn't even happening other other places.
I mean, when we have these gun debates after mass shootings, you know, a lot of times the pro gun crowd will say, we'll be like, Oh, the Democrats are exaggerating the amount of mass shootings there are. Right.
Like when every town puts out the list of mass shootings, because for example, this assassination attempt, like wouldn't even count on, on the mass shooting list. Right.
Cause it's like only one person died. That's how crazy we are.
We're in this situation where this is happening. It is oftentimes these young men that have access to these weapons.
It is crazy. I think the Democrats, that is one thing Democrats can talk about, I think, in good conscience and not feel like they're having to tiptoe around some of these other issues that are more complicated.
I do. I want to close with just one thing.
I just got to say it. People come to this podcast to hear what I'm really thinking about.
And I can't just I just can't pretend like I'm not thinking about this. Bill Maher did a little riff on this last night, too.
He posted on social media. Like, Trump is like the luckiest son of the bitch in the world like it's really unbelievable you can't say that i can't it's isn't it unbelievable no like you know it's not lucky to be almost assassinated no it's not lucky no it's not i mean i i guess i don't know man it's just i think that the way that things have conspired in his favor a lot of times just does boggle the mind.
I will say up until... Up until the assassination? Up until 7.05, whatever time it was.
Yeah. No, I mean, look, I think up until this point, because I don't think you can say that's lucky.
I mean, obviously, it's fortunate that that bullet was not one inch over. I mean, that would have been obviously horrifying.

And just really quick, I've wagged my finger to J.D. Vance.

And I've seen from fucking terrible posts from people on the left about that.

Like, oh, if he had only been a better shooter or one inch more.

Like, what would have happened in this country?

Like, whatever you think about Donald Trump, what would have happened in this country had Donald Trump been assassinated?

Like, A, it's horrible. Violence is never the answer never the answer like it's horrible for trump and his family but then the fallout like anybody who says that is like has the vision of somebody that like cannot like look more than one inch in front of their nose and like a moat yes i think that that's disgusting i feel like that reaction is um both inhumane like it's hard to describe it as anything other than that, but also like it would have set us in an incredibly dangerous path.
We're already on a very, very dangerous path. It's hard to even comprehend the reaction to what would have happened if the would-be assassin had succeeded.
Now, look, I think to your earlier point about Trump's luck, like, yes, you know, he, if we'd sat here on January 7th, 2021,

and told you that, like, one, you know,

he would have become the Republican nominee

without basically lifting a finger.

He didn't do anything.

He didn't do any debates.

The impeachment efforts would have fizzled.

The prosecution efforts would have fizzled. the Supreme Court would have given him immunity, he would have ended up with Joe Biden having incredibly problematic moments in a debate like that.
And he'd be on the front page of the New York Times with a raised fist and an American flag and a bloody ear. And having gone through all this, it's like a there's something surreal about it obviously and there's something weirdly cinematic about it too in a in a like scary cinema how is this our world like this it feels unreal it does feel a little unreal and and like when you're covering it too it's like i i told someone this uh who did i tell someone at the bulwark i was was, when they were talking about it, I was like, look, when I started political reporting, it was the 2008 democratic primary.
It was Hillary versus Obama. And I remember commenting to someone on the trail.
I was like, it will never get crazier than this. Like, this is the craziest shit ever.
And it's only gotten crazier. It's like, it just gets crazier and crazier and crazier minus Romney Obama.
That was very normal. And I feel like we're not even at the top of the mountain yet, like of the craziness.
Hopefully not knocking on wood, praying if you pray, but we, we have an ugly few months ahead of us. Sam Stein, thanks for doing this.
I thought it was important to get our initial reactions out to folks. And you know, these things are going to continue to develop and uh we'll be we'll be talking about it all week i've got bill crystal on the podcast tomorrow appreciate sam who is outside at his in-laws house with children upstairs doing the podcast work so i appreciate it brother thanks tim we'll see y'all tomorrow with bill Crystal.
Peace. I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down.
There's battle lines being drawn. Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.
Young people speak in their minds are getting so much resistance

from behind time we're stopping And a carrying sign Mostly say hooray for our side It's time we stop Hey, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down Paranoia strikes deep Into your life it will creep It starts when you're always afraid Step out of line, the man come And take you away We better stop, hey, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going on Stop. Hey, what's that sound?

Everybody look what's going.

Now stop.

Hey, what's that sound?

Everybody look what's going.

We better stop.

Now what's that sound?

Everybody look what's going.

We better stop.

Yeah, what's that sound?