>> coming up on "washington journal," we will get to president trump's rally and then reporter craig gilbert for a preview of the republican national convention in milwaukee . c-span's "washington journal" is next. host: it is sunday, july 14, 2024. in pennsylvania yesterday, a failed assassination attempt on former president donald trump. today, the nation tries to come to grips with what it means for

the campaign and our country. coming up, we want to hear yo reactions to yesterday's events. our phone lines, for democrats, (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001. pendts, (202) 748-8002. as usual, you can text us at (202) 748-8003. please be sure to include your name and where you are writing in from. we are on social media, @cspanwj on x and facebook.com/cspan. first, let's look at the entirety of the moment at the campaign rally yesterday. [video clip] >> you want to really see something sad, take a look at what happened. [indiscernible]

[screaming] >> move. >> we ready? shooter's down. are we good to move? [indiscernible] >> let me get my shoes. [indiscernible]

[chanting "usa"]

[indiscernible] host: the fbi's leading the investigation into the events of yesterday. yesterday, fbi special agent in charge called the shooting and assassination attempt. this was before they identify

the shooter, which has since happened, but let's listen to those comments. >> this evening, we had what we are calling and assassination attempt against our former president, donald trump. it is still an active crime scene. as i mentioned, we have a number of agents on the scene. we are working closely with other federal agencies, with our state partners and local police partners as well. again, at this time we are not prepared to identify who the shooter is. we are -- as soon as we are 100% confident in who the individual is, we will share it with the press. with that being said, we do not currently have an identified motive. our investigators are working tirelessly to attempt to identify what that motive was. host: we have since received

more information from the fbi about the shooter, who was killed in the midst of the events. here is an article from the philadelphia inquirer. the fbi identifies the gunman. federal authorities sunday named thomas matthew crookes of bethel park, pennsylvania as the gunman who shot at former president donald trump and what they describe as an assassination attempt during icam handrailing -- during a campaign rally. crooks'political leanings were not immediately apparent. campaign finance reports show he gave $15 to a progressive political action committee the day president joe biden was sworn into office. those updates came as the fbi and pennsylvania state police fanned out across the region in the hours following the attack two days before the scheduled start of the republican national convention in milwaukee, where the former president is expected

to officially accept his party's nomination peerless go to milwaukee, where an npr political correspondent is going to be live to give us the latest on what has been going on in the moments we have had since the terrible events of yesterday. good morning. what sorts of reactions have you been seeing from particularly republicans in light of these events? guest: the universal response from both sides of the aisle's condemnation of local violence. we have seen leading figures in both parties say, including president biden, that local violence is not acceptable and un-american. we have heard several leading republicans, including many seem to be on the shortlist for trump's vice presidential nomination, for his running mate in milwaukee, speaking out and offering prayers and concern.

we heard almost a round table of responses and expressions of support from people like ohio senator j.d. vance, florida senator marco rubio, and others have been mentioned as potential running mates for trump. i think everyone is condemning political violence, but there is a sense -- there has been a growing sense, and i have been talking to experts since this happened, sort of pointing to a pattern of rising concern about political violence before this moment. host: the trump campaign and republican national committee statement in respons atement they put out.his was a president is ing well and grateful to law enforcement and first responders for their fast actions. president look forward to joining you all in milwaukee as to nominate him to serve as the

47th president of the united states. president trump will continue to share his vision to make america great again. what has the outcome of all of this meant for the convention? guest: former president trump and the rnc leadership say they are pressing on. they are planning to continue the convention. there is not any disruption to that. i had one meeting with a republican source this morning, so people are regrouping a little bit and preparing and cognizant of what has happened. this is going to be a very heavy security event even before this happened. on my flight here from charlotte, north carolina to milwaukee there were dozens of uniformed police from a local unit on the plane coming here. i know there have been media

reports of other states, including minnesota, offering heavy law enforcement presence led by the secret service and milwaukee police, which is par for the course for political conventions, which are always high-security events, particularly when you're talking about president candidates quit no less a presidential candidate who has been president before and already has secret service protection and has for years, but this is going to be on everyone's minds as the convention opens tomorrow. it is sort of everyone's worst nightmare that something like this would happen and no doubt security will be on high alert even more because of the events of yesterday. host: what do you think this means for the trump campaign more broadly moving forward? guest: i think we saw former president trump even in that moment, i think that famous come

iconic moment will be from last night's event where he raised his fist in the air as he was let off the stage, making him be defiant. that is kind of his modus operandi. trump does not back down from critics and that is what many of his supporters like from him, so i suspect we will hear a lot about this. i think republicans, from comets i have seen so far, are rallying behind him and i think everyone is concerned about what has happened, but i imagine we will hear more about this. one of the concerns i heard from one of the presidential historians i was talking with yesterday after this unfolded was the idea that there has been an atmosphere of heightened threats for many years now, heightened political tensions. we are aware of that. polls indicate americans expressed concern about political violence and a poll

last year suggested may be a greater disposition toward it, a growing sense that in some cases it might be appropriate, so this is happening at a moment when there is already a lot of tension and concern and one of the historians i spoke to said she was concerned this would feed into a persecution narrative that we have heard from the former president before and from his supporters. certainly this was a real attack and it is tremendous the concerning. host: you have spent quite a few years covering trump and his supporters. what are you looking for and wanting to hear from people as you head out to cover the convention in the coming days? guest: i think we are already seeing this event being politicized with comments from some members of congress and other leading republicans sort of blaming democrats or president biden for this and i want to be clear that there is

no evidence -- of course there is no evidence that president biden had anything to do with this, but these kind of moment become politicized in the minds of voters. there is misinformation online, so i will be watching for where the messaging goes beyond the initial expressions of concern and support and thankfully condemnations of local violence. do people on both ends of the aisle point fingers or is there coming together and recognition of the inappropriateness of this kind of action in a democracy? host: thank you so much for joining us from milwaukee. war statements that we have been getting since yesterday. republican senator mitch mcconnell says, tonight amicans all are grateful that president trump appears to be

fi after a despicable attack on a peaceful rally. violence has no place in politics. we appreciate the swift work of the secret service and other law enforcement. now we would like to go to your calls and hear your thoughts on what happened yesterday. please keep it civil. tyrone is in new york on our line for democrats. good morning. caller: thanks for taking my call. my concern is i do not think it is going to help this country get together because i fear it becoming more divisive and people going to their corners and coming up with conspiracy theories. i do not know how this is all going to work out, but i understand that hate only breeds more hate and unless we get a full understanding of what is going on in this country this is only going to get worse. i hope nobody else gets hurt. i understand people died.

i give my condolences to the people that passed away out there and to trump that he got injured. i am a democratic voter, voting for joe biden, but i do not want this country to fall into chaos or confusion because that is not going to help any of us. if we are busy killing each other over nothing, we are going to get nothing. we are going to get nothing. we kill each other over nothing, we are going to get nothing. we need to get ourselves together and understand we only have one america. if we decide to destroy it, then we are going to say i remember when we had this and that. now we have destroy this country and what we can have. we have so much. host: let's hear from janice in

florida. caller: i'm to say my prayers are with the trump family and donald trump and the people who lost their lives. it does not make sense that this world has become so hateful, but i am going to say i blame the democrats 100% and the mainstream media. i never listen to cnn, but i listened to them this morning and i heard one of the newscasters say he was ashamed that he has been hyperbolic with his comments toward trump and he has a six-year-old and he had to explain what assassination was. and the fact that the democrats have been going on and on and maxine waters getting away with her threating comments. it is over the top ridiculous. this man is a billionaire. he does not even have to do

this. he wants to save america and make america great. he loves this country. he has been through how. that man has gone through more than any representative or anybody running for president i have ever known in my life because he is not a globalist. god bless america. we have to get it together because this is beyond ridiculous. my prayers are with him and i believe donald trump will win. host: michael is in new york on our line for independence. caller: i am african-american, independent, and i want to talk about political violence speech in the last month. political violence speech. we have many democrats, including the president,

defining donald trump as hitler's, a threat to democracy. joe biden said he will be a dictator on day one. comments by hillary clinton and maxine waters over the last eight years. they still say donald trump was in a legitimate president. this is by hillary clinton and maxine waters. political violence speech by adam schiff just last week on meet the press, saying that scotus are -- the supreme court are making terrible decisions. there are people out in front of our supreme court houses and you have 51 intelligence agencies. 51 intelligent officers said that the hunter biden laptop was

disinformation. we know that was a lie. we have a shooter that is 148 yards away from the president of the united states on a roof. that is a football field and a half. i do not trust the fbi. i do not trust the cia. i don't trust the intelligence officers because with trump we have all seen they have been lying. and he will not give secret service protection to robert kennedy junior, who is running for -- to be president. he will not give them secret service protection, so i don't see how any american can trust this investigation thank god for mike johnson and republicans are going to hold a committee looking at a shooter on a roof 148 yards host: let's go to david in new

york on our line for republicans. caller: first, i want to say i love donald trump. everybody needs to love donald trump. i have a lot of african-american friends. i am jewish. they vote for trump and now 100% from the religious youth will vote for trump. all religious youth vote for trump. crump was doing the most things for the african-americans. president lincoln was doing the most things for the african-americans and african-americans are so supportive of donald trump and i want to say joe biden a couple days ago said if donald trump -- joe biden spoke about what is happening because he said we need to shoot him. you can see it.

everybody should have a nice day. the african-americans are the best people and will vote for donald trump. have a nice day. host: a few more reactions that haven't coming in over the last 24 hours related to the events. hakeem jfries, the lead democrat in the house of representatives, my thoughts and prayers are with former president trump. i am thankful for the decisive law enforcement response. america is a democracy. politicavience of any kind is never accepbl speaker mike johnson. kelly and are praying for president trump and all the attendees of the rally in pennsylvania. senator john fetterman of pennsylvania. i am appalled and condemned in the strongest terms of this violence in butler. i extend my condolences to those injured and wish a speedy a full recovery for mr. trump.

former president barack obama said there is no pla political violence in our democracy, although we do not knowly what happened. we should all be relieved the former president trump was not seriously hurt and use this moment to recommit ourselves to civility and respect in our politics. senator bob case said, i am monitoring the situation at president trump' rallyn butler and reached out to the state police to offer spo. political violence is never acceptable and i'm hoping former president trump and all attendees are safe. everyone in butler should listen to law enforcement. marco rubio said, god protect president trump. doug burgum says we all know that president trump is stronger than his enemies. today he showed it. and j.d. vance. trump campaignaying the president is ok. hope everyonis safe. and steve scalise, who himself

was shot in an active lol violence, said, for weeks democrat leaders have been fueling ludicrous hteria that donald trump winning reelection would be the end of decracy in america. clearly we have seen far lt lunatics act on violent rhetoric in the past. this incendiary rhetoric must stop. now let's hear from janice in tennessee on our line for democrats. caller: i want to make a comment. i am a democrat. and of course i am going to vote for joe biden but i feel like donald trump has brought a lot of this on himself by his rhetoric and the way he talks about everybody, not only democrats but civilians, people who voted against him or are against him in anyway. i am sorry this happened. i am glad he did not get killed. i think he brought a lot of it

on himself and i appreciate you taking my call. host: next we have frank in new york on our line for independents. caller: let me see this. let's start from the beginning. trump botched the covid response. then he sent a violent insurrection to the capital. he just said bring out the guillotines. then the supreme court opened the floodgates for all types of guns to be released. they are just crooked and out for themselves. they gave him carte blanche to do anything he wants. that is criminals covering each other's backs.

if i helped the president, i cannot get convicted of anything because i am a supreme court justice. they are all wrong. they are all bad. this is esau and esau fighting against each other. jacob needs to stay out of it. for the guy who was talking about black people, do not speak for us. you do not speak for us. thank you. host: john is in california on our line for republicans. caller: obviously this senseless act of political violence can be 100% attributed to the rhetoric of propagandists and pendants and left-wing legacy media and the democrat party. they have been lockstep in trying to foment and fabricate this violence against trump and his supporters for seven years now. this is tragic. every democrat wakes up this morning with president trump's blood on their hands. thank you.

host: next we have conrad in tampa, florida on our line for democrats. good morning. caller: good morning. i was taking of that adage. you live by the sword cut you die by the sword. i hope congress can get together and pass some legislation because i have not seen a photograph. maybe you can bring a photograph up of the rifle he used, but to be that far away he must have had a military war rifle and i think that this is -- this could be an opportunity for mr. trump to be like st. paul before he was knocked off h horse and got back up and he did good things.

i believe good things can happen from this in the sense that it could make the usa a better place. i know that president biden talks about the number one way kids die is from guns. i feel that legislation should be proposed and acted upon that would limit these devices. that is pretty much it. i hope people show up to vote in november. host: here is president biden speaking to the press yesterday evening about the events in pennsylvania. >> i have been thoroughly briefed by all the agencies and

the federal government as to the situation based on what we know now. i have try to get a hold of donald. he is with his doctors. apparently, he is doing well. i plan on talking to him shortly. i hope when i get back to the cell phone. there is no place in america with -- for this kind of violence. it is sick. it is one of the reasons we have to unite this country. we cannot allow for this to happen. we cannot condone this. so i want to thank the secret service and all the agencies that were engaged in making sure . we have more detail to come relative to other people who may be injured in the audience. we do not have all that detail. we will make that available to you. we will put out a statement. the bottom line is the trump

rally was a rally that should have been able to be conducted peacefully without any problem but the idea that there split violence or violence in america is unheard of. it is not appropriate. everybody must condemn it. everybody. i will keep you informed. if i speak to donald, i will let you know that as well. so far, it appears he is doing well. they are thoroughly investigating what happened to anyone else in the audience. we have some reports but not final reports. i am going back to my phone to speak with the federal agencies being put together again to give me an updated briefing. so thank you and i hope i get to speak to him tonight. i will get back to if i do.

>> do think this was an assassination attempt? >> i have an opinion, but i do not have all the facts. i want to have all the facts before i make a comment. host: the fbi is investigating this as an assassination attempt. the biden campaign is pausing to munication's in the aftermath of the trump rally shooting, saying it is working to pull down his television ads follow the shooting and an official said saturday biden spoke on camera following the incident and issued a written statement saying he was grateful his clinical arrival was safe and the trump campaign said in a statement that the former president is fine and being checked out at a local medical facility. that was last night. let's get back to your calls. roberto is in houston on our line for independence. -- independents. caller: the shooter was a

registered republican. i heard trump spewing hate against president biden since the very beginning of taking the stage. i was getting sick of him. i wonder if the shooter got started when he had heard enough. violence begets violence. i wonder what trump and his followers think about gun control now. does the second amendment prevent the attempted assassination of donald trump? let's ask the current supreme court. the head of the secret service should be fired, excuse the expression the trump rally was not being conducted peacefully. as president biden stated in subsequent remarks. thank you very much.

for not interrupting me. host: in tennessee, our line for republicans. good morning, bubba. caller: i have been a listener on weekends to you guys for a couple years and for the last so many i do not even know how many months, you have callers calling in talking -- calling trump all kind of names hitler's commit putin, a threat to democracy. you name it and they have done it on your show. just a couple weeks ago, a republican called in and called by the nuts -- called biden nuts and you hung up on him. i blame a lot of it on you all because were callers from all over the country have been calling in calling him all kinds of names. just because this shooter was a registered republican don't mean he was a republican.

we do not want to do away with guns because the bad guys are going to have guns and people want to protect ourselves without guns. so i do blame the media for what went on last night. i hope for a speedy recovery and i think we are going to have trump president and i guarantee you when trump wins the presidency democrats are going to be out looting and burning businesses because the last election or the one when trump got elected, businesses were boarded up -- it was the last election. businesses were boarded up in case trump won again. they was not boarded up in case biden won. we need to pray for this country and get trump elected so he can get this stuff straightened out. host: stacy is in chicago on our line for democrats. are you there?

caller: i am here. how are you? i thought -- i think you for accepting the call. i want to answer the question. how did we get here? because of the person himself speaking hatred, lies. we got here because people wanted change. we got here because democrats, republicans, independents -- we got here because supreme court justices want to take rights from women. they allowed authoritarians here today. we got here because the president who got wounded yesterday -- if he had love and

respect, we would not have -- the hatred has to stop. that is what is happening in america today. a lot of hatred has happening here. the democrat side cut the republican side, independent. i am on the side of what i feel. i feel hurt. we the people should be able to vote without feeling our system of elections have been stolen. they have made america look like a third world of america because they have allowed it here. this is not a third world. we got here because they have no communication and the republicans say they are patriots. this is not a patriot.

a patriot is my father, who just passed away. this has to stop. it is going to keep going on and on because they continue to think this election has been stolen. this is not a white world. this is not a black world. this is not his -- a hispanic world. what is happening in america is not going to happen because we are not going to accept it, so needs to be stopped and the person that got wounded yesterday quit my condolences to him and the family and he needs to be a better speaker and not speak hatred. host: let's go to ozzie on our line for independence -- independents. caller: i don't condone the violence that went on yesterday.

the democratic callers i have heard have the right point. since trump came down the stairs, all he has been doing is talking bad about other people, talking about violence against people from the opposite party. threatening others. the only one that said he was going to be a dictator was trump. he said it on live tv. how do you expect a person -- maybe that person that went on that roof was so scared of having a dictator like putin running this country that maybe he has mental issues and he decided to act that way, but the only person that brought this upon himself was donald trump. since day one call he has been doing is promoting violence. telling others to punch somebody in the face of they do not like what they are doing at his

rallies. you cannot do that. and then with the tables get turned on you, now you're going to become a victim. now his supporters want to be trump is a victim. trump has been spewing all this hatred and violence since day one, since he came out, so let's see trump now. let's see how he reacts now. biden, the first thing that came out is no violence. he is calling him by donald. he is trying to be a civil person. if this would have happened to biden, i guarantee you today trump would have been making fun of him like he made fun of nancy pelosi's husband when he got hit with a hammer on his head. all the republicans were making fun of it and laughing about it but it is not funny what happens to you. now they are all victims. now they are all cowering behind the victim card. i do not condone it.

violence is not the way to do it. we have to do it on the ballot. he started all this. host: let's hear from marilyn in ohio on our line for republicans. caller: most of this is caused by people who call people races dictators, liars, and all it does is inflame things. when people call in, you should cut them off when they say he is a liar or this or incompetent. you should only take calls were they say about an issue like i believe in abortion or i do not believe in abortion or in the economy and why i do not believe in the economy. so i guess if we got the hate titles off of everybody and just

stuck to the issues we will be much further ahead in our politics. host: next is sandy in atlanta on our line for democrats. caller: i would just like to say today i felt i woke up in an alternative world. we have a person who got hurt yesterday that has spewed hate all through his candidacy, even his presidency. and i want everybody to come together. get rid of the hate. bring back the love and understanding. that is all i have to say. host: steve is in pennsylvania on our line for independents. caller: i watched this last night. one thing i caught was that the service people, the people who were supposed to protect him, were not even around him.

they ran up the steps. i remember when bobby kennedy was assassinated back in 1968, he was running for president at that time a there were servicemen around him, so i blame some of this on them. i have been talking to you in the last five to 10 minutes. it is not a republican-democratic thing. this nation has forgotten what is right and what is wrong. they forgot dealing with respect to people. like about abortion. abortion itself is murder. i have two children. they are up in years now. that is murder of a human being. we forget our morals.

we need a border. we need a border. every nation needs a border. we are a republic. we are not a democracy. i do not want a democracy. we are run by rule of law. people run it, not politicians. that is two things i talked about. but i am concerned this nation has turned their back against god. they have walked away from him. what is wrong with the 10 commandments? thou shall not kill. love your parents. love people. i don't see what is wrong with that but i feel this country is going into a third world country . a third world country, you have

anarchy. you have shootings and killings, corruption in government. we are headed in that direction. if we do not turn to god from the heart -- hate comes from a person's heart. it does not come from anybody else. it comes from your heart. host: you mentioned the secret service at the getting of your statement and i want to read the statement from the secret service. the secret service spokesperson tweeted last night, during former president trump's campaign rally on the evening of july 13, a suspected shooter fired multiple shots toward the stage from an elevated position outside the rally venue. u.s. secret service personnel neutralize the shooter. the u.s. secret service quickly responded with protective measures and the former president is safe and being evaluated.

one spectator was killed. two spectators were critically injured. the incident is currently under investigation and the secret service notified the federal bureau of investigation. now let's hear from tina in mississippi on our line for republicans. caller: i would like to point out some misinformation that has been spread on the show over and over for the last 10 years. first, donald trump did not start the chaos and name-calling . when he came down that elevator 10 years ago, the democrats and the media started attacking him, telling lie after lie on him. you people take little snippets out of things he has said and you make it into something else.

for instance, like he is going to be a dictator. the correct information on that is he said he was going to be a dictator about the border and close it as soon as he got in. that is the truth. you people do not seem to understand the truth or even want to because you are haters of donald trump and i know that you would all be happy this morning if he was dead and gone. you all should be ashamed of yourself. you destroyed a man's character. you know you did. i blame the media and this show, who could be a great tv show if you would stop letting people perpetrate lies like you do every day. it is only the democrats that you allowed to do that. you will not let a republican telly fact or the truth. you cut them off.

you should be hanging our heads in shame today because you caused this incident. the media is 75% or 80% of the media is owned by democrats. it is not fair. and you take advantage of it. you don't have any character you don't have any integrity. everybody who works for washington journal should hang their heads in shame. host: thanks for your call. we have more video from the horrific events yesterday, in particular the panic as the gunman opened fire here highlighted in the new york post with some video showing people reacting in that moment. we will show a clip of the video here from the new york post. [video clip] [indiscernible]

>> stay down. >> on top of the roof. don't go over there. he's on the roof, buddy. [indiscernible] host: more scenes of that chaos yesterday in the aftermath of that shooting. go back to your calls. ron is on our line for democrats. can you please turn down the volume on your tv? caller: hello? host: i can hear you. caller: according to the southern poverty law center,

there are over 1650 hate groups in the united states and 28 in pennsylvania. he was not shot by an immigrant. he was probably shot by one of these hate group people. all the school shootings in this country were by right wing hate groups. it was not immigrants. that is why my concern is the hate groups in this country are multiplying and they are causing more havoc. same with black lives matter. most of those fires were caused by right-wingers and whatever you have. they were not by -- those people were actually peacefully marching. it was not until nighttime that all this mayhem took place. it was all by these people who come out of the woodwork, these hate groups.

we ought to get someone from the southern poverty law center on your show to talk about this type of thing going on in this country. that is my comment for today. host: more coverage from the new york post about the follow-up to yesterday's events. it says that comer announced a probe into the shooting and will call the secret service director to a hearing. the house oversight committee chairman announced his panel will open an investigation into the shooting against former president on trump. comer, a republican from kentucky, revealed he had already contacted the secret service and requested its director appear for hearing on what authorities are investigating as an assassination attempt against the former president. i have already contacted the secret service for a briefing and i am calling on the secret service director to appear for a hearing. the oversight committee will send a formal invitation soon, he said in a statement.

back to her calls -- your calls. caller: good morning. in the 1950's, there was a senator from wisconsin named joe mccarthy who was talking about the communist party in america. the communist party in america is here and has been here for several years, causing all sorts of chaos because that is when communists really come out of the woodwork, when there is chaos. this guy yesterday, i'm sure you will hear from it, that he was involved in some type of left-wing organization that spew all this hate and the southern poverty law center is a communist organization started

by a communist. the last thing was the guy mr. deef. he was a communist who started the southern poverty law center and they were communists then. host: let's go to rick on our line for republicans. caller: thanks for taking my call. i think the democratic party -- the democratic machine is the problem. they are the one causing all the hate, from nancy pelosi tearing up her speech at the state of the union, maxine waters, all these people have been attacking trump and the media has never really held him accountable. the people that are democrats seem to only watch and want to hear what their party believes, so you have all these people

with hate in their hearts because they will not listen to what donald trump is really saying because the media will not let them do it. it is nonsense. the whole machine is like that. you do not see the republicans going and shooting up senators practicing baseball. you do not see senators -- republicans shooting up people who go to a concert that is a country music concert. it is not republicans during the violence. it is not the guns during the violence. it is the person behind the gun. host: thanks for calling np or next is police -- for calling in. next is elise

>> i moved to get away from the hate filled state of florida. trump, i am glad he did not die but i'm surprised this was the first attempt that we know of to take his life, but clearly he is a felon. he is a criminal. all he does, even after he got hit, he put his fist up saying fight. that is not what a leader of a democratic country should promote. he brought it on himself. i feel sorry for the victims, but i do not feel sorry for trump. i believe this will be a change and i do not understand how people cannot see through trump's evilness.

i support separation of church and state. what trump has been trying to do is bring one religion into this country. the country was founded on freedom from religion and religious oppression. anyway, thank you and i -- we have to come together as a country and put all the hatred aside but trump is the leader of hatred. that is my opinion. thank you again. host: kim is in california on our line for independents. caller: thanks for taking my call. it was horrible what happened, but one of the things i do not hear people talk about is accountability. we limit on the democrats and

republicans. you can blame it on black lives matter. you can blame it on the right wing, but it is actually us. this kind of murder happens every day in america. every day, people are dying. our kids are more likely to die from gun violence than anything else. but we do not ask what is really happening. it is not the shooter that is sick. we are all sick that we have allowed this to go on. death to most people is not anything anymore. biden and the powers that be and trump, they are responsible for death everyday. look what is happening in palestine. we cry more for this man -- we are more upset about this one man and the attend on his life than all the hundreds of thousands of people that have died in palestine and around the world. the victim -- these are victims

-- people get shot in synagogues and going to any store. this is happening all over. it is us that is sick. we have to start examining that it is not the shooter that is sick. it is us. i do not know the answer but i know one thing. america was built on hatred. it was built on people. -- on evil and such things as racism and sexism and slavery and the patriarchy. this is what is causing our world. we have a lack of empathy and understanding and we need each other to survive. host: i want to pause there because we have news from the associated press about a new post from former president trump , calling for unity after the assassination attempt. in the post on his social media

network, he also thanked everyone for thoughts and prayers yesterday as it was god alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening. we will fear not but instead remain resilient in our faith and defiant in the face of wickedness, he said. he also said our love goes out to the other victims and their families and he said he is praying for the recovery of those who were wounded and hold in our hearts the memory of the citizen who was so horribly killed. in this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand united and show our true character as americans, remaining strong and determined and not allowing evil to win. james is in tennessee on our line for republicans. caller: good morning. i hear a lot about trump, his hatred and threats -- through the years, on tv, that is all i have heard, hatred from adam

schiff from california, waters from california month oc from california. and aoc from new york. everybody wants to talk about trump's hatred. what about these people's hatred? these people have been going on for years and people believe everything they say on tv, so if you want to say chuck schumer is this or trump is that, people believe that. and people's attitudes have to change, the way they talk and act. because whatever you put on tv people believe. and there's hatred, a lot of hatred everywhere and it has to stop. it has to stop. if it does not stop, you are going to have this and more.

i just wish it stopped. that is it. host: michael is in new york on our line for democrats. caller: good morning. after watching these events unfold yesterday, it sheds light onto how important this election really is at this point. my opinion, as far as where this is going to go now, is mr. biden -- you have a battle that you are fighting now to actually save our democracy from being ruled by such a person like trump. however, his safety is paramount. i get that. i understand it. but everybody is blaming the shooter and society not being with it. how about we start blaming mr.

trump and his actions he has been taking? he provokes a lot of this stuff with his rhetoric and speeches at these rallies. you can listen right before he was attacked, how he was attacking the system. i get it. everybody has contention with the system and the way the government works. politics is an ugly arena. we all know that, but mr. trump now is become a martyr and he is going to play this, i just know it. i can see it in your post that you just showed. he is playing it. i just say this. >> i've never seen a country

this divided, even during the civil war i don't think it was quite this divided as it is now. host: we are going to end it there and tried to get in one more call for the segment. worchester, massachusetts. caller: hui, thanks for taking my call. i think we really got to wake up in this country and find out exactly what is going on because i mean, i'm not a security person or anything like that but having somebody up on that roof, that sounds like oswald all over again. i mean, there's no way this even should happen. host: thank you, fred. next, as the country continues to absorb yesterday's events, the political world is going to turn its focus to milwaukee, wisconsin with the republican national convention taking off tomorrow. after the break we will speak

with veteran political reporter craig gilbert to preview this week's convention and how yesterday's shooting might impact the proceedings. we will be right back. announcer: c-span's campaign 2024 takes you live to milwaukee for coverage of republican national convention. tune in live as delegates from across the country gather to select the republican nominee for president. watch as they lay out their priorities for the next four years in the party vision for the future. there republican national convention, to live on c-span, c-span now or online at c-span.org. c-span, your unfiltered view of the convention. in 2022 the ncaa women's

championship, collegiate swimmer riley gains tied for fifth place in the 200 meter freestyle final with transgender athletes leah thomas. since then she has become an outspoken critic of transgender women competing in women's sports. on this week's q&a, riley gains talks about her swimming career, her stance on transgender athletes and the backlash she has received after going public with their views. topics covered in her new book "swimming against the current." and when i asked this question of why are you adamant on giving this trophy for the man in the women's 200 free? what is the thought process here? i appreciate his honesty and understand he said this with a somber voice. his face changed, it visibly looked sad. i could tell he didn't even believe what he was about to say but he looked at me and he said riley, i'm so sorry but we have been advised as organization that would photos are being taken it is crucial that the trophy is in leah's hands.

>> riley gains with her book "swimming against the current" tonight on c-span q&a. you can listen to cumin day and all of our podcasts on our free c-span now at. --app. washington journal continues. host: welcome back. we joined now by craig gilbert with marquette university loss go. he's a former washington bureau chief and national political reporter for the milwaukee journal. thank you so much for joining us. >> my pleasure. host: so you have covered presidential politics for several years as a order and now as an academic. what is your reaction to what happened yesterday? guest: of course it is a shock, it is demoralizing. we finance or big a lot of shock to the system in our political

culture in recent years and this year and just in recent months. the felony conviction, presidential debate, all these questions swirling around in democratic nominee is going to be an now this is in a category of its own. that is a lot for people to absorb, is a lot of uncertainty, a lot of volatility. and then of course coming on the people of our first real normal convention in eight years since 2016 in the middle of a pretty epic presidential contest. so it is just kind of breathtaking in a lot of ways. host: you are also a fellow at the lubar center for public policy and research and civic education and when it comes to sort of civic in this country, what do yesterday's events tell you about where we are? guest: i think the reaction and

how we deal with yesterday's events will tell us more than the event itself. it takes one unhinged person to do this, but it is really about how people respond to it. all those questions are on the table right now. how does it affect donald going forward? how does the affect his party, how does it affect the convention, the country? and course you are already seeing as fresh as this event is, you are already seeing a whole range of reactions from calls for healing to very divisive and very angry reactions. so i think what will be telling anand's how this affects our political culture more than anything else. host: speaking of responses, i want to go back again to trump's

recent post untruth social from just about half an hour ago saying thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers yesterday as it was god alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening. we will fear not but instead remain resilient and our faith and defiant in the face of wickedness. i love goes out to the other victims and their families. we pray for the recovery of those were wounded and hold in our hearts the memories of the citizen who was so horribly killed. in this moment it is more important than ever that we stand united and show our true character is americans remain strong and determined and not allowing people to win. i truly love our country and love you all and look forward to speaking to our great nation this week from wisconsin. what do you think of that response? guest: i think we use calling for unity i think that strikes the right note. i think he would like to see people trying to lower the temperature right now, not raise

the temperature, not point fingers. but this is going to raise the temperature in some ways. it is certainly going to hang over the convention. if you think back in the context, the political context of this convention is republicans are coming into it with probably more confidence in the outcome of this presidential election than any convention that had in the last 20 years going back to at least 2004, and now i think this is certainly not going to do anything to shake that confidence but it kind of injects a new element into the mindset of the party, whether it is defiance, whether it is mobilizing, motivated and unified within the party. that will depend in part on the candidate and the nominee, but it can't help but have an impact on the sort of psychology and the mood of the convention and

donald trump, his statement that his speech this coming week will have a lot to do with that. host: what about security at the convention, the you anticipate that things are going to be different in milwaukee than they would have otherwise? guest: absolutely. obviously security was going to be very tight. again, the first in person convention in eight years because of how the pandemic affected the last round of conventions which were pretty virtual. so one of the things i've been thinking about going into this going to this convention is how was going to look and feel different than the conventions we are used to seeing over the last few decades? and i think in some ways it is going to feel similar but in other ways it can't help but feel different. technology is different. i'm sure there will be more virtual elements to it.

but it should feel a lot like a traditional convention. there will be areas where it may feel a little different. in terms of access, and terms of restrictions, in terms of the presence of law enforcement. i think that is going to be an element both of this convention and milwaukee with the republicans gathering but also in chicago for the democrats went on top of that, the potential for protests and the general chaos of the selection, -- this election, those are a lot of volatile ingredients. host: what other storylines leave you watching this week? i know this is going to dominate many thoughts and speeches, what else are you looking for in this convention? guest: i think we are also looking for, we are looking at the message of the convention. that is what a convention is about. the message of the party, but

the candidates are trying to send. in the case of donald trump, you are always looking at how much of this is his personality, how much of this is about him very personally, what is the kind of policy aspect to it, what is the tone? people have been wondering whether there's any kind of pivot, whether it is to the center or whether it is in tone. the big political question hanging over donald trump at the beginning has an, has had to do less with his ability to mobilize then with his ability to kind of calm, assuage people who are not the democrats, but independent and moderate, people in the center who had reservations about him. so is he speaking to those

people, or is he just trying to fire up the faithful? i'm sure there will be elements of both. host: we are expecting the announcement this week of former president trump's vice presidential candidate who will be running along with him. to what degree does the vice president impact a presidential race and especially with this one with trump being the kind of candidate that he is? guest: i think it is kind of on a long list of things that have effects around the edges of the ridge -- the race. this race is 90% locked in place when you think about how locked in most voters are and the fact that most of the states are spoken for already. including wisconsin, the host state, arguably the swing he asked -- swingiest of the swing states that are really in play. the playing field is narrow.

the number of persuadable voters out there is limited. the closer the race is, the more things like the running mate, events, third-party candidates, the more all these other factors sort of come into play. in all it takes is to swing a few thousand votes in either direction in a single state if the race is close enough. it may only take, as we saw in florida, a few thousand. one or two states divided by a few thousand both. so absolutely in that context of a running mate could absolutely matter. people are wondering whether the choice here is one to represent some of the doubling down by donald trump in terms of his messaging tone, or whether it

will be seen as kind of an effort to broaden his appeal et al.. host: of the names that have been floated for this job, do any of them come to you? guest: well, there are three names that have been talked about the most. --, rubio and vance. i don't think anyone is ruling out another choice. these things are unpredictable. the scene this in the past. this isn't the first time we've gotten very close to a convention without knowing who a candidate is running mate was, including donald trump and pick mike pence, john mccain when he picked sarah palin. donald trump in this case is drawing it out even a little bit longer, but we did think that the choice of the running mate was going to be sort of a big part of the drama of this convention until yesterday happened and now it is certainly

going to be overshadowed by that, but it is still a significant part of the convention. host: before we get to our collars, what do you make of the recent pushback that president biden is getting from his own party and how much do you think that is going to benefit former president trump? guest: it has been benefiting republicans and it is one reason -- why republicans are sort of feeling as bullish as they are about this race. because there's turmoil on the democratic side. in the wake of president biden's debate, you have a tremendous amount of division within the democratic party. it's not an ideological division, it is just a lot of voters and a lot of people who are active in the party with very different views of president biden as a candidate and future effectiveness as president, given his age.

so that is a huge wildcard in this race and the fact that it is as unbreakable at this point in the race for the democratic nominee is going to be is pretty stunning. and it puts the democrats in a terrible position obviously that is going to be difficult for them to d out of because joe biden of course was argued leave the underdog before all this happened in his path to a electoral college majority seems to be getting narrower. he needs to basically run through wisconsin, pennsylvania and michigan. in wisconsin, the host state of this convention was on a nice age going into all this. it was decided by a fraction of last two races. the polling has been pretty consistent that this has been an election decided by only a few thousand votes.

again, before the debate and before yesterday's events. host: let's go to some calls. remember, you can call in. for democrats, (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002. we will start with peter in texas on the line for independents, good morning. caller: thank you, good morning. i'd just like to make a general comment. essentially, we are all complicit in the violence that we've been experiencing for many years. we all need to own our complicity before this can change. before we can change the conversation. before we get back to the issues. too many in our country that espouse violence as a necessary

prelude to change. we look at our institutions generally where even the media, if it bleeds, it leads. but it is not just the media. is everybody, every individual. i am not hopeful that we will change. the way our media is set up with every individual channel having its own search, so to speak, where we can all go to that church and get reinforced about the extreme or some of the extreme that we are prone to listen to, it is almost like a drug and the gap gets wider and wider. host: let's let craig respond to that point because that came up quite a bit with callers in the

previous hour, the role of the media in the narratives leading up to these events of yesterday. yes: well, sure. the media is part of the equation. it is obviously not the whole equation, the media landscape is very fragmented and at the caller noted, people can go for reinforcement resources that they like and they may have nothing but skepticism about the information they are getting from one side. in a better world, in a perfect world but also a better world, people would i think approach the information they are getting from all sides with the same skepticism with the same sort of discernment and they would also, as the caller noted, along looking at the other side, they

would look at themselves as well when it comes to the rhetoric they use, when it comes to the motives they ascribed to their opponents. these are all things that are, i think, troubling to a lot of people about our political culture. they aren't brand-new. they have worsened in some respects, but we can certainly point to periods of the past when these were problems that have political culture. it's just that the information landscape is so different, so intense and so immediate and it is so pervasive that we feel i think much more viscerally than we may have in the past. host: hawaii on the line for republicans. go ahead, jacob. caller: i've been watching all this and i've been thinking that america was founded on the principles that political violence is sometimes not only

right, but necessary. and i think that if people of knew historically where we were at, we are not free and everything that the founding fathers fought for has been lost. i do not feel free, i was recently threatened with arrest several times by police because i used my free speech to say something controversial. and this is all i said, i have free speech. i think the only people that have gotten fair trials in america this year's hunter biden and donald trump. for people who don't have money, we are not really getting the rule of law or equal protection and i've been watching this video going what about the people that got shot? that person that got a head wound. nobody is really attending to that person and that is kind of just a symbol of how the common people are treated in america these days. if you a billionaire you get a more than fair trial.

you get railroaded in court if you are not. i just expect that this is going to keep increasing and i'm hoping that it is going to be minimal bloodshed, but i don't know that the system can fix itself from within from what i've seen. and i have asked burgers and one of my special interest when i was in grade school was the american revolution and i'm very aware that america responded -- i don't know what is going to happen but i think no matter who wins the next election, the people are going to lose. host: make you, jacob. you have any comments for craig before we move onto to the next caller? guest: we do have a history of fluke of violence in this country which sometimes is forgotten and certainly we've

had much greater levels of political violence in the past and we have right now. of course, the fear is that this is the beginning of an area -- era for a period of increased political conflict and violence and that is what makes yesterday's events so fearful and alarming in distressing. that history is certainly there as the caller said. but you can also see from all the comments and conversations people are having how an event like this just brings all these much bigger and broader conversations to the floor. it brings to the floor the broader worries and fears about sort of where the country is headed. that is sort of part of the legacy of an event like this.

post: let's hear from richard in maryland on the line for democrats. caller: hello, good morning. this incident that happened with donald trump is absolutely un-american, should never happen. i'm going to keep this abbreviated. people listening to the media inject their own personal opinions from what each media outlet says. they inject their own personal opinions. that is a big problem. that never should happen. plus, not all the information is found yet. could it be a terrorist? there's far too much that needs to be learned yet to come to a

complete decision. and still, this country is so divided. it is so divided. this is america, not read vs. blue. too much violence. host: thank you, richard. craig, any thoughts on richard point? guest: no, i will let it go. we are living in a very divisive and divided time. i think that could be overstated sometimes. again when you take so big historical view, and it is not the case that everybody is sort of a participant in the battle of red vs. blue, not everybody is a partisan. there are still people who are not engaged at all in politics, they don't vote or they don't pay attention until the very end of the campaign or they are not

really invested as much in who wins and who loses as the red and blue camps in our electorate. in some respects they are getting deeper, the sort of fault lines in our electorate, the faultlines lines in our political map. the gap politically speaking between urban voters and rural voters has been widening for decades. almost every election. so you look at the faultlines in the electorate today by gender, by education, and of course, by party. that is the most significant one of all. and those are the partisan faultlines that are getting

deeper, people are more divided than ever among partyline in terms of right v. left and in terms of being able to support or view sympathetically anyone or any candidate from the other side of the dividing line. it is very difficult for people when i compare it to when i started in politics a long time ago, particularly in the 1990's when it was pretty unsurprising to have candidates for office, republicans getting the votes of 20 or 25% of the voters in the other party. one third or more of the electorate's, i think in the end, this election will be decided by that kind of small group of people that still do swing and still are in play so we shouldn't forget they exist as well and they will be

decisive in this election. host: i just want to remind folks that they can follow the coverage of the republican national convention on c-span.org. we will have many of the speeches as well here on c-span. we have a question via text from jimbo in akers field, california who asks what messages does mr. gilbert think will be telling the people inside? guest: i don't know to what degree the people inside are going to see or hear the message. the protests won't be in their face, there'll be some separation there. i'm curious about that myself. clearly, there will be protests directed at former president trump. there will be protests around very specific issues.

abortion might be one of them. certainly the war in gaza could be another one. i think that is some of what you will see in terms of the demonstrations, the protests. you can imagine an array of issues in hearing from people and seeing them and i think we will get a really good of that this week. host: brian is in new mexico on the line for independents. caller: i want to first blame our corporate media that turned politics into professional wrestling. it is all about how much money they can make and how they can entertain people and they focus on the horserace and we did very little discussion on any of the serious issues which confronts humanity by climate change. it's fairly mentioned. they will mention it when a hurricane shows up but the rest of the time we don't even talk about it. maybe it's because they don't

want to offend the auto companies that advertise on their channels, i don't know. but another observation, social media now is a huge player and i think americans need to stop and think and realize that there are some huge actors participating in our politics now. like the russian intelligence service, like the chinese intelligence service, your body intelligence service. like right-wing israelis. the saudi royal family, the gulf state arabs. these organizations are putting millions and aliens of dollars in efforts into causing chaos in the united states political system and it is working. because most americans unfortunately are poorly educated, they don't understand their government. they don't point out the political failures that have occurred over the past several

decades. our example with communist china and all of these free-trade deals and all the american jobs getting moved to asia. post: i'm going to stop you there and let craig respond, particularly in light of some of those questions around the media and particularly this going to be a lot of media in milwaukee this week. guest: there is. hundreds and hundreds presenting different countries, different organizations, different kinds of media, different landforms. one of the difficulties of having these big, sweeping conversations in the media is obviously not monolithic. it is fragmented, it covered a huge spectrum. there is right-wing media, left-wing media. this corporate media.

there's a lot of individual players out there. but the media has never been more fragmented and also, more subjects, at the caller noted, to mischief when it comes to social media because of the nature of information technology. it is also hard to make sweeping generalizations about the media of the media is so many different things. people used to complain about the media as a kind of gatekeeper where only a few organizations set the tone and decide what people could see and hear. now we have bismuth messier media landscape from all directions painted is not just one or two or a handful of actors deciding what people see and hear about. it is a lot of people. and so again, i think it makes

it sort of more problematic to paint them media with broad brush of a single stroke. it is the fragmentation of the media that is part of the people i think free out about when it comes to where the information is coming from. yeah, this is going away. i think this plenty of fault defined in the media, but sometimes people kind of want to put everything onto the media when the media is not a single organism and it is sort of one big part of the equation. host: you mentioned that wisconsin is quite a swing state and i wonder to what degree this year's presidential race is impacting the state races including democratic senator tammy baldwin trying to win

reelection. guest: yes. so we have a big race other than the president for u.s. senate, tammy baldwin is seeking a third term. she's a democrat. she won her first two races pretty handily. she won her last race in 201811 points. and she got the votes of a fair number of people who voted republican for governor that year. so she's got a pretty good election track record. one of the questions surrounding her race this time is if donald trump were to carry wisconsin for president, how far ahead of joe biden would she have to run to keep her seat? she has been not only outperforming republican opponent in the polling but she has been running better than joe biden has in the presidential race, she's been running better in the senate.

it was before the presidential debate. she had a five-point lead roughly at her senate race in the presidential race was kind of a draw between biden and trump. i think there was a recent poll, a bipartisan poll with chatter still ahead by about five point in the race but had donald trump carving out a five or six point lead in wisconsin over joe biden. soy think the expectation is that she is going to run ahead of joe biden and the question is depending on how close the presidential race is and who wins the presidential race, how many people are going to split their tickets between those two races? the last time i think there was a split outcome between the presidential race and a senate race in wisconsin on the same ballot was 1968, so it is a challenge if you are running in the party that is losing at the top of the ticket, they're certainly a real chance.

it is challenging in historical terms between your race when you are in the same party if your candidate in your party is losing at the top of the ticket. they state legislative races so we have new maps. the math that were in place were very favorable to republicans and probably had baked in republican majorities in the state legislature. the new supreme court has a liberal majority in wisconsin, so the maps, it is more of a level playing field so that introduces a new dynamic that is not just about the legislative races, but could affect standing and organizing around the states. host: and you mentioned eric come these running against tammy baldwin. -- around johnson are going to be speaking at the republican national convention this week. i want to go to a question from

dion who asks willie rnc in milwaukee be a gun free zone? the constitutional right to carry a deadly weapon in a public space from the safety of the many. this person is being sarcastic. guest: this is an issue that has come up a lot in the past. obviously the city has its own rules, the state has its own laws and we are going to get security obviously at this convention, so it is not really an open question. but was counted as a state where there's a lot of gun ownership, where there's a lot of hunting. it's a state actually where there's a lot of democratic gun owners and a lot of democratic hunters. when we think of what kind of voter support each party, and we

think of gun owners, if you are a gun owner you must support the republicans, if you a white noncollege voter or eight rural white voter, you must be a republican, but the lines are much more mixed than that, particularly in a state like wisconsin. it is a very white state, a very rural state and a very blue-collar state. voters lean republican collectively, there also a big part of the democratic party in wisconsin as well as a huge part of the republican party. host: i want to ask you about project when he 25 which the biden campaign is reported here and in a variety of other places has been planning to make project 2025 a key focus of the messaging around the convention and around trump. obviously that could change now given what happened yesterday, but we have thisuestion from jerryanring on x. will they bring up project 2025

at the rnc or will they hide thr anes from america and pretend they don't to make trump a king? could you briefly describe project 2025 and respond to the question? guest: project 2025 is sort of a blueprint put together by supporters of president trump for what would happen in a trump presidency with respect to the federal government, the civil service, the role of government, what would happen to specific agencies. and it is a document that is alarming to a lot of democrats and a document that democrats would like to use as a campaign issue against republicans, and we seen in recent weeks, certainly donald trump do some distancing between himself and

project 2025, so you asked me before what i'm looking for at this convention and i'm sure we are going to see some signals with respect to some of these issues, but you will probably see elements, but i think we will also see efforts to deemphasize aspects maybe some of the more controversial things that the people around trump and maybe trump himself wants to do in a trump presidency. so again, it is sort of part of the suspense of this convention with respect to messaging, how hard-core is the messaging going to be, what issues are going to be stressed, what issues are going to be off the page. host: another question from x, what is your message to the people who do believe in political violence?

guest: i guess, you know, my message would be it is certainly not the answer and nobody wants to be victimized by political violence on either side. nobody should be talking about it or entertaining it. it is so troubling, so disconcerting, so damaging to our culture and our system. it is just totally illegitimate i think is the obvious answer. host: mike is in alexandria, virginia on the line for republicans. caller: what happened yesterday, that is not new. we are a violent country. you know how many attempted murders happen in this country a month? the only thing changes are the faces. but a question i have for you, i have a theory.

can a poor person, a working poor person, can they be a republican? that's it, thank you. host: go ahead, craig. guest: so, you know, clearly there are working people who are republican. i mean, this gets at one of the interesting kind of political science questions about the selection. the coalitions that support the two parties are always evolving. there has been a lot of talk this cycle about the working-class coalition in the republican party kind of ross racial and ethnic lines in the bid. we certainly seen evidence in the polling particularly among hispanic voters, movement toward the republican party. there's been some evidence in

the polling with respect to black voters that really margins that you see favoring democrats shrinking a blue bit, at least, in cap the city of milwaukee which is really the biggest, most diverse community in wisconsin. it's one where democrats rely on huge margins. democrats have been in recent elections, but the margins, the turnouts really matter. something the democrats worry about is a city that is kind of people part, maybe 45% black, 40% white and 20% hispanic and other races and other ethnic groups. so it is a diverse city. so if it turns out in this

election, for example, that there are game 5 republicans among so-called working-class blacks and working-class hispanics in a city like milwaukee, that has potential consequences for the election. again, in a really close election. so the two parties are constantly gaining and losing ground with different parts of the electorate. they look at the milwaukee metropolitan area, they are losing ground in the white suburbs. compared to where they used to be a decade or two ago, which was a real area of strength historically for republicans, and those margins have been shrinking's donald trump's first election in 2016. so one of the questions, for example, about the milwaukee metropolitan area which is like a quarter of the electorate in wisconsin is can republicans stop the bleeding in the suburbs for can they make up for it maybe by making some inroads in the city?

which is a different kind of question that we've been asking in the past gets at the caller's question of whether this is something real or not. host: another question via text from gus in brooklyn having to do with the media. do you see private media eclipsing public media in the not-too-distant future? guest: i guess i'm not sure what is meant by private media and public media. i don't know if public media refers to national public radio broadcasting? post: i suppose commercial media like we were referencing earlier, the corporate media, i'm guessing. guest: i guess i don't know what public media would be her what the difference between the two would be. i think most media will continue to be private in the sense that

it is not publicly controlled or funded. i don't see that changing. at media landscape is going to absolutely continue to change and evolve because of information technology and how people get their information on social media. but i don't know what that means with respect to the caller's question. host: last collar for now, karen in maryland on the line for democrats. go ahead. guest -- caller: yeah, i can help you out. msnbc doesn't have a single host on their channel who has not incited violence against donald trump and his voters. you can go back to donald trump's first term. his cabinet members were being chased out of restaurants. people volunteering to register voters were being beaten and assaulted. if you had a sign in your yard, your home was vandalized.

this is nothing new. the ladies on the view, they have some soul-searching to do because they bear responsibility for every crazy person -- host: you called in on the line for democrats, are you a democrat? caller: i have been a democrat since 1983 and i am standing here holding my original registration card right at this very moment. i have worked for the democratic party. i have elected democrats but i can tell you right now there is not a single democrat that will get my vote this time around or the next time around or maybe never again. i'm a registered democrat because in my local area i remained a democrat to help my local candidates. but i am sick and tired of the national media and the excuse-makers. you were talking about the vitriol and everything. you knew that it was an inflammatory tweets, a sarcastic tweet and you chose to make it part of the dialogue this morning.

we are better than that. and you need to wait in the media, there is a nut job in every zip code of this country and they have tv, too. we need to stop this right now. i don't want to hear anyone saying the word maga extremist, i don't want to hear anyone call donald trump an existential threat to this country. because what we have seen happening in this country to donald trump is the existential threat to this country. host: thank you for your call, karen. any closing thoughts? guest: i mean, just that as you can hear, it absolutely in the eye of the beholder. what people hear the other side saying and you can't tell people not to express alarm about the people they oppose politically. where do we draw that line between concern, alarm, alarmism

and extreme language> that is certainly in the eye of the beholder. host: thank you so much, craig gilbert who is a lubar fellow. appreciate your time this morning. and coming up next, we will have more of your reactions to yesterday's shootings. r one lines are on your screen. decrats, (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-800 independent, (202) 748-8002. you can start calling in now. ♪ >> c-span's campaign 2024 takes you live to milwaukee for our coverage of the republican national convention.

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with first-hand accounts of political reporters, updated poll numbers, fundraising data and campaign acts. watch c-span 2024 campaign trail today at 7:30 p.m. eastern on c-span, online at c-span.org or download as a podcast on c-span now, our free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. c-span, your unfiltered view of politics. washington journal continues. host: welcome back. we are taking your calls to get your reactions to yesterday's attempted assassination and former president donald trump. we will start with gary in texas on the line for republicans. . caller: thank you for taking my call. about the assassination, remember back in 2016 donald trump talked about the second

attempt that had caused things. we've got a problem with diversity as far as the wide range that america is split. if the presidents don't start bringing people together, it's going to get a lot worse. yesterday proved in. i didn't realize that joe biden had kind of put trump in the bull's-eye. i don't know what is going to happen with the country, i hope it gets better. host: thanks for your call. indiana, line for democrats. good morning. >> good morning. i just wanted to say that there are three names on that bullet. the first name, donald trump. he is the one that created this

environment of cruel rhetoric, i can grab women by the so-and-so and nobody could say nothing because i'm a celebrity. all the way to january 6. the second name you can put on that bullet is congress. they are the ones that supported it. they are so keen to gafter him. january 6, feet, and everything like that. and the third main you can put on that bullet, the supreme court. they are the ones th ge finn a very threatening power to be immune from the law. for his crimes. i mean, everything from i can go out in the mide of wall street and shoot somebody in the law is not going to touch me to erhing else. and now you've given him power that people, even republicans don't want a president to have. that threatens people. i'm not saying that it was right what happened, you should never enter a problem with a bullet,

but he set the pattern up. the problem was set out from the beginning. if we look at history, all the pattern. he set his tattered up and that is all i want to say. thank you. post: in the washington post there is a story about trump allies immediately blaming biden and democrats for their rhetoric relating to yesterday's events. supporters argued the democratic portrayal of trump as a threat to democracy led to the violence , though the shooters motive was not apparent at the time of their remarks. cap allies of donald trump excused president biden paint is supporters of using rhetoric that went to a shooting and potential assassination attempt saturday at a trump campaign rally in pennsylvania, even as biden condemned the attack and called for the nation to unite against political violence. senator j.d. vance, republican from ohio and a potential trump running mate said on social

media that the shooting is not just some isolated incident, the central premise of the biden campaign that president donald trump is an authoritarian fascist must be stopped at all costs and so that rhetoric led directly to president trump's attempted assassination. senator tim scott, another time ally shared a similar sentiment. with be clear, this was an assassination attempt aided and abetted by the radical left and media essentially calling trump a fascist or worse, he wrote on social media. at the time of those statements there is no public reporting on the motive of the shooter. trump said he was wounded in the ear at the event and was rushed from the scene. we've been watching but we still have not had any sort of update from the fbi in terms of the motive of the shooter. let's hear now from ronald in ohio on the line for independence. good morning. caller: hello. how are you doing?

ok, i would like to say if the government would just stop the committees and actually vote on violence so the cops can do their jobs, which they do, but once they get in court -- host: what do you mean vote on violence? caller: when people kill other people, they get in court and they get off because of the defendant's plea. he has a plea bargain. and then they get off. they kill somebody and they don't serve any time. host: ok, thank you, ronald.

to from richard in savannah, georgia on the line for republicans. good morning, richard. caller: good morning. let's talk about a 20-year-old shooter. for the last eight years of his life since he was 12, he served nothing but donald trump is a threat to democracy, he seen fake impeachments, these seem laws against and in court rooms and 100% democrat-run city of new york convicted enough stuff that is insane, taking a misdemeanor to a felony 34 times. this job has heard -- child has nothing but negative against donald trump for the last eight years. i do blame the media. look at yourself and c-span.

the guy from cnn took over, you guys have gone full blown and msnbc. this is horrible and i do blame the media but a 20-year-old has to the last eight years heard nothing except how bad, how he is to flirt -- hitler. this has got to stop. you all didn't pull the trigger, but he has heard nothing except horrible things about a man that has really done nothing except lead a billion-dollar lifestyle to help out america. thank you for taking my call. host: the new york times has some reporting on what is known so far about the gunman. authorities identified him as a 20-year-old man from a town about an hours drive from the side of the shooting. the gunman who attended to assassinate former donald j. trump at a rally in pennsylvania on saturday was identified by the fbi as thomas matthew

crookes, a 20-year-old from pennsylvania. officials release no additional information about him. this remains an active and ongoing investigation the fbi said in a statement on saturday. he did not have a criminal history reflected in pennsylvania's public court record and officials said they had not identified his motives. a voter registration record shows that mr. crookes was a registered republican, the federal campaign finance records show he donated $15 to the progressive turnout project, a liberal voter turnout group through the democratic donation platform in january 2021. law enforcement officers had closed all roads leading toward the home of the suspect south pittsburgh and in our from the rally site in butler.

law enforcement officials recovered in ar-15 semi-automatic rifle near the body of a whitman they believed was the gunman. good morning, steve. caller: remember the bloodbath -- host: i don't know. caller: you never heard bloodbath coming from trump's speeches? comment is that trump is responsible for 500,000 deaths in the united states of america

when he went against the cdc guidelines. trump is responsible for a war that is killing millions in the ukraine because putin told trump to make sure that nato is weakened like a feather and trump is responsible for the war in gaza because he moved the embassy from toilet -- from tel aviv to jerusalem. all of these things are ailing the entire world and trump is responsible for all of it. host: david is in new jersey. caller: just a technical

question. there are people standing behind president trump when his ear was grazed and i cannot understand with a weapon of that caliber how two people could be standing when something of that force went by his ear and grazed it. the people are just standing there and nobody seemed to be injured by that. host: one person was killed and two others were critically injured. caller: in all of the tape in the footage, the people behind the president crouched down and nobody appears to have been affected at all. maybe it is just a technical glitch with how it was photographed. host: i wouldn't know but i'm guessing that the people killed or injured were not visible in those shots. caller: the angle doesn't make sense.

it is going at the same height or lower than the people standing behind him. all you see is that his ear has been grazed. it doesn't make sense. i guess the people who videoed it are not technically proficient. i'm not sure. it doesn't make sense how are they just standing there. this is a massively powerful weapon. i would be interested in anybody else's comment. host: jerry is in kansas on our line for republicans. caller: i would like to give my condolences to the families of those who left lat -- who lost loved ones over there. i blame the media, the social

media platforms. you see the comments people make about trump and it is horrible. it's an elected official and is so sad the way that they talk about everybody. host: a previous caller was talking about the path of the bullets in the crowd, the from the new york times the photo appears to capture the path of the bullet. the image captured by doug mills seems to show a bullet streaking past former president donald trump. there is that photo that references that using that particular fbi expert's opinion. that is the effective michael

harrington who spends 22 years in the bureau. it could be showing the displacement of air due to a projectile he said in an interview. the angle is a bit low to have passed through his ear but not impossible if the gunman fired multiple rounds. simple ballistic math shows that the photo is possible. let's go to our line from her democrats. caller: good morning to you. i am born and raised in alabama and honey and gun like that could not have just hurt his ear. that was nothing but a stage

from trump to get people feeling sorry for him. host: we are not going with conspiracy theories today. caller: all i have to say is that trump started this from day one. i don't want to see nobody get shot or killed because political violence is crazy but he started it all. the kid was a registered republican. people say he is a liberal but he was a republican. maybe he didn't have a chance to vote yet but he is still a republican. not all republicans like donald trump. all republicans do not accept

the former president. host: thank you for your call. marcia is in tampa, florida on the line for registered republicans. caller: i cannot believe what some people are saying. he is a confused idiot. people saying bloodbath i am so tired of this. this is with the media allows to happen. biden has been saying it. trump said bloodbath when he was talking about electric vehicles. they take everything trump says. they always have and they turn it around. biden said put a bull's-eye on trump. now they are making excuses. they didn't make excuses for sarah palin when she said her

thing about a target with gabby giffords. there will always turn it so that trump is to blame. i have friends that are democrats. the stuff that they say is spit straight out of msnbc. cnn has been doing better. their fear mongering viewers into thinking that the world will end. trump has disavowed project 2025 but you keep bringing it up like he is behind it. some of his people from a think tank have written ideas. every party does it. the brooking institute does it

for the democrats. it is unfair with the media does. they have been doing it since 2015 and have convinced half the world that trump is a monster and a nazi and that is why this is happening. you need to fact check these people. msnbc should be find and biden should -- his pretend act -- he is calling for this. as far as people saying people are not educated, the department of education came up in the 1970's and before that this country was educated. trump is talking about getting rid of the department of education. it is the same system that has not educated the people now. it is unbelievable that i hear people calling and continue to say just like the bloodbath

comment that guy from ohio said, it is taken out of context and they don't care. host: marcia was mentioning former president trump distancing himself from project 2025. they planned to transform government and trump claimed to be aware of it. donald trump had distanced himself from project 2025. drafted by long-time allies and former officials. suggesting there would be a second american revolution. trump posted i know nothing about project 2025, i have no idea who is behind it, i disagree with some of the things they are saying and some of things are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. anything they do i wish them

luck but i have nothing to do with them. caller: i think that the republican party suffers from the trump woe is me syndrome. they cannot own the fact that this man has been out there spewing all kinds of rhetoric to incite his followers because these are mostly republicans doing these mass shootings. the republican party is so entirely divided in many ways that they are only going after their own. maybe he did give $15 to something that endorses biden, but that doesn't take away the

fact that this man, this person, was still a registered republican. there are many republicans who do not agree with trump and his incitement of violence has led to this. i'm sad he got shot and i really feel bad for the others who were injured there are crazy people out there. we have a lot of mental health issues that need to be addressed in this country. we need gun laws to stop firearms in the hands of these who should not have them.

this is all i have to say. host: laura is in massachusetts on a line for independents. caller: gun violence is horrible but the sad part about this thing is that it will be politicized by the republicans and try to make trump some kind of martyr because of this will stop there are millions of guns in this country and people die every day by gun violence. if it is a famous person like an actor or a former president than oh my this person got shot how horrible yet it is happening every single day. trump is totally pro and ra. . even mentally ill people should

carry guns according to them it is ironic that the people who will be out there speaking against this 20-year-old kid who did have issues still don't see the fact that these millions of guns in this country is unnecessary. in the 1800s there was one person with a musket, they didn't have hundreds of guns in their house in a stockpile. we have a supreme court who would like to make the president immune to anything he does. nothing about stopping any of these dangerous weapons. what do they expect?

now they are all shocked because it is trump that got shot at but this is happening every day. caller: let's move on to richard in pell city, alabama on the line for republicans. host: i -- caller: i won't comment with the recent comments about gun control but i will say one thing and go back to the shooting, where it came from. the gentleman from ohio said he did not understand why the people behind him were not hit. guns are not violent, people are. for years we have listened to democrats. apparently the independents have called in and the media called trump a nazi. called him hitler's. use the bloodbath quote.

talking about the country will end. lives will be in danger. that kind of rhetoric creates issues. guns don't kill people, people are people. now the trajectory issue. like the gentleman from ohio i was wondering where it came from. you can see the president was looking to his right. that meant that his left ear was facing the front. is right here is what got hit. the shooter was from our left. watching across the stage. the people behind him were not in the line of fire. assuming the shooter was on target with the podium. the people in harm's way were on the right and the other stands that were in the line of fire. i will leave it at that. hopefully we will see more intelligent comments coming up.

host: i want to show this map from the new york times laying out what we know so far. showing where the shooter was supposedly located. this is where the stage where trump was speaking. and the wounded rally attendee was here. the bleachers that we were seeing were behind many of the videos. that is from the new york times. let's go to a collar in north carolina on the line for democrats. caller: i'm actually in asheville. nevertheless, there was a gentleman from georgia a beautiful area and he is so

wrong about blaming trump for all of this. i have been a democrat all of my life but i believe that i am offended -- if you live where i live you thank your lucky stars that you have a gun to protect yourself. i am a democrat and i am a gun carrier and i do not think it is gun violence. the woman going on about guns -- host: we lost you for a moment. caller: if she lived in the area i live she would love her gun. i'm sorry guns are used for violence but as the gentleman said the guns are not the problem it is the people. somebody else talked about moving the embassy to jerusalem -- there is nothing wrong with

that. that has been promised for ages. i have a roommate. he is republican and cannot ever get through to your lines. i get through so easily on the democrat lines. what is the problem with that? i told him you can call as a democrat, i have no problem. you have a blessed day. host: we take the calls as they come. next up is our line from houston texas for independence. caller: the lady that just called, she is obviously not a democrat, she is a republican, but i'm sorry that president trump got shot at yesterday. there is no place for violence. look at the political system for

the last few years. in 2016 when president trump started running he says i could shoot someone on fifth avenue and i would not lose support. during the debate with hillary he was threatening her with second amendment. this time around he is talking about a bloodbath if he loses the election. obama never said anything like that, bush never said anything like that, clinton, ronald reagan never said anything like that. they will try to win sympathy votes i think it will get worse. that 20 years old to have an ar-15, he is not old enough to make a decision on what is right or wrong. he is 20 years old but at the same time these are the same

republicans fighting tooth and nail to get it done -- must have some mental issue. evidently this guy is a republican. that is aside from the point. he is not old enough. 20 years old carrying around an ar-15 knowing he might have mental problems. we should look at this critically. president trump should tone down his language. bloodbath, threatening them over there. all of them should be gone. it's already a violent political environment. host: ron is in illinois on the line for republicans. caller: i did not want to address the whole gun thing. guns don't kill, pencils don't

dispel words, cars don't drive drunk. i have never shot a gun in my whole life, never plan on it. why do they want to take the big guns away when 80% of all gun deaths are from handguns they don't want to take the handguns away. there is no way to overthrow a government with a pistol. crazy people should not have guns cnn and msnbc are complicit. listening to joe biden speech, he is complicit to this. listen to what he said about donald trump and you wonder where the anger and the hate is coming from. the rhetoric going on right now in politics is wrong. all of the democrats it is a

slamdunk, he is our next president. thanks for doing you what you do and thanks for being democrats. host: guy is on our line for democrats. >> they want to talk about msnbc but what about fox news with the things that they have said and done. aren't they the only new station that has been sued for lying because they always want to back trump? that is one. two, when trump ran in 2016 at his rallies he would talk about go ahead and be violent and he will bail you out of jail. i'm really confused that

republicans they think trump is gone and he is not god. host: teresa is on our list for -- line for independent. guest: i would like to say my hearts and prayers goes to the person that was killed and the young one was injured. that would like -- i would like to know about the gun that was used and how many shots. how is it that nobody behind trump was hurt. host: i am not a forensics expert so i will leave that alone. i want to point out some of the

global reactions that we have received here. this is an article in politico. prayers for trump oren from world leaders -- for trump pour in from world leaders. world leaders rushed to condemn the shooting. the former president was bleeding from his right year as secret service members whisked him off stage following the attack of those global reactions. the hungarian prime minister, some of trump's closest friends on the international stage, were two of the first to offer prayers for the former president and to condemn the shooting at his campaign rally. my thoughts and prayers are with president donald trump in these dark hours. he met with trump two days earlier skipping the last day of

the nato summit in washington. he also offered his support to trump in a social media post. sarah and i were shocked by the attack on president trump we pray for his speedy recovery. other leaders like the new british prime minister and canadian prime minister renounced all forms of political violence. i am appalled by the shocking scenes and president trump's rally. political violence in any form has no place in our society. trudeau wrote on x that his thoughts are with former president trump. i am sickened by the shooting. it cannot be overstated, political violence will never be acceptable. dolores is in smithfield, virginia.

can you turned down the volume on your tv? caller: ok. my tv is off. host: go ahead. caller: i am 87 years old i have been a republican all of my life no matter what people are they are responsible to answer to god for killing someone or trying to kill someone. don't they realize they are in danger now. host: thank you.

responding to the question that one of our previous callers had about the details of the weapons, this is from the details we are getting out that law enforcement forces reported in ar 15 semi-automatic rifle was recovered from the scene minutes after trump took the stage in butler. at least five shots rang out. the secret service said he was safe after he was rushed off the stage with blood on his face. details are still coming out about the event yesterday. annie is in florida on our line for democrats. caller: caller: i am just floored. you just hear the fear and

anxiety and the mistrust in every republican. it has been for eight years. it is just so bad. the fear is the enemy. donny is his only enemy because he incites violence. no democrat has ever incited any violence democrats do not buy all of the guns and they have never incited violence anywhere ever in the world. what they've been taught is so bizarre. guns kill people. pencils were not designed to kill people. cars were not designed to kill people. guns were designed to kill people. i wish republicans would watch their mouths and not blame the

media. if you watch donnie's mouth and what comes out of it and joe's mouth and what comes out of it, then you can make your decision from there. thank you for your time. host: thank you for your call. mcgee is in maryland on the line for independents -- maggie is in maryland on the line for independents. caller: i have a comment. i served 20 years in the military. i do not want to get into gun violence but [indiscernible] they are designed to rip people apart. it is really sad this is another example of gun violence in america. my main point is what i struggle with is a lot of these comments are pointing fingers and a lot of them are not taking a moment to sit back and say, what have i

done to contribute to what is going on in this country right now? i was born and raised in one party and have since matriculated away from it based on my personal values. i do not like the demonization going on across the aisle. when you hear even trump after he got injured yesterday saying we need to come together as a country, president biden said the same thing, we need to take a moment to do some soul-searching and understand how all of our individual actions may insight somebody who disagrees with us. i think we need to take a moment and reignite what it means to be a citizen in this country and what civil debate means. [indiscernible] or the other party for violence.

that is my point. thank you. host: thank you for your call. next, let's hear from david in south carolina on the line for republicans. good morning, david. caller: how are you? i would just like to say it is the fake news anti-communist propaganda news that is indoctrinating and brainwashing all of these people out here. it used to be in u.s. history illegal for propaganda news. who put it in there and arranged it so it could? obama. the news lies on purpose. they cannot be sued, they are protected. that is number one. two things need to be changed

immediately because all these people calling in and saying, especially democrats is just a repeat of fake news lies. as far as the gun thing goes, they have been trying to take our guns away for decades. talk to the old chinese woman who escaped china before he turned into a communist country. she has been on tv trying to warn americans, just look what they did in china that i escaped from. they take down the statues, they rewrite history, they change the language. they are doing it step-by-step to turn this into a communist country. all of these democrats are absolutely all for it. that is what i want to say. host: thank you for your call, david.

this morning, we are hearing more in reaction to yesterday's events. house speaker mike johnson was on the today show this morning talking about the shooting and encouraging everyone to turn down the rhetoric. [video clip] >> america awakens to a surreal morning. this is a horrific act of political violence that should be condemned. we cannot go on like this as a society. our prayers are with president trump, all the rally attendees, certainly the families of the individuals who lost their life and those injured. we got briefings from law enforcement. i spoke to the secretary last night and asked pointed questions with regards to homeland security and what happened. i have announced congress will do a full investigation of the tragedy yesterday to determine where there were lapses in security and anything else the american people need and deserve to know.

we need to turn the temperature down in this country. we need leaders on both sides to call that out and make sure that happens so that we can go forward and maintain our free society we are all blessed to have. host: back to your calls, richard is in florida on the line for democrats. good morning, richard. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, ok, -- caller: ok, mine is a simple message. i am a democrat. there is a bigger picture here. if you view all of the facts, why did trump get hit in the ear instead of the middle of the head, that is the big picture people need to think about. that is all i want to say. host: suzanne is in miami, florida, on the line for independents. good morning. caller: good morning. it strikes me that when president kennedy was shot, the entire country mourned. i was only a 10-year-old child

and i felt it in my heart, i felt the shame and the sorrow in the president being shot. right now, this is just a fight matter. i do not even know why you are identifying people when they calling as one or the other because it only adds fuel to the fire. it is a very sad day in our country and i wish people would turn it around. we saw people in the crowd shooting birds and pounding their fists saying, "fight, fight, fight." we have to stop it if we want to continue to live the life we have been able to live in this country. that is all i'm going to say. thank you for your time. host: kathy is in georgia on the line for republicans, good morning. caller: recently, you had representative al green on. all he did was spew out a bunch of hate about president trump, former president trump, you had

senator danforth, republican, another trump aide are -- hater, all he did was spew trump aide on your show -- trump hate on your show. you are complicit. all of them are trump haters. they are putting this fake stuff like the russia collusion. that was false. you had sarah bernhard say she wished governor palin was raped by black men. senator waters sent to get in republicans' face. since abraham lincoln was assassinated, it is always a democrat. you had johnny depp say, where is an actor when you need him to assassinate president trump? you had madonna say blowup the white house. none of this is stopped.

it just gets repeated. it is lies about president trump . this bloodbath was about cars. the bleach stuff was a lie. it is all lies they are telling about him. of course, people are going to get upset. look at the hype. like one man said, this child that attempted the assassination against trump, all he heard was hate against president trump. it is just sad. we need to come together as a nation and thank the lord president trump is still alive. we need to get god back into our country. host: thank you for your call. amy is in richmond, virginia, on the line for democrats. good morning. caller: hello. there are several things i want to address. the first is that people are

calling in and saying the united states is not a democracy. actually, if you go online and research, the united states is a democratic republic. you can read all about the definition of that online. i did not realize people say that. i agree with people who have called in and said it is the media's fault. i think a large part of it is the media. i totally agree msnbc and cnn and fox news and all of them go for sensationalism. they care about money. people need to realize that. people should go research on their own and find the facts for themselves instead of just taking what the people safe on tv for granted because i do agree a lot of what they say is

untrue. they want to make it as sensational as possible. there are many republicans that are truly afraid for donald trump to be president again. some of these are people who worked for donald trump when he was in the white house. many of the people were deep on the inside his administration who have come out and said he is a danger to our country. it is not just -- i do not understand why people do not pay attention to that. trump from day one has spewed hatred and whatever. it is just horrible. i do not understand why people hang onto his every word when it is just hate all of the time. host: let's hear from joe in

chandler, arizona, on our line for republicans. good morning. caller: good morning. how you doing? i am calling because i am a little confused. i am hearing different things from different people on this broadcast talking about trump being a hater. he is not a hater. he is a lover. he loves his country. he loves his family pretty loves his friends. to hear these people say it like they know. they do not know anything! especially the democrats. the democrats are the haters. look at what we have in the white house right now. every chance he gets, he bad mouths trump. he called him an existential threat, nazi. what kind of language that for a president of the united states? i would just say this. donald trump showed great strength and courage yesterday after being shot. he is going to be president,

this fall. thank you very much. enjoy the rest of your weekend. host: thank you, joe. a couple of comments we have received online and through text. demoatic and republican callers seem to be blaming everyone but the security services responsible f protecting trump. there will always be unhinged people who are a threat to candidates. this was a terrible security failure. that is one comment we received via text. let's hear from connie in california on our line for independents. go ahead. caller: i feel it is not democrat, republican, or independent, it is the individuals in the government. nancy pelosi showed total disrespect by not standing. they mentioned donald trump's penis size. they have attacked each other's families. there is no manners, no limit to

what they tear down each other's families. it is the police's fault because they did not look up in the air to see who was up there. people were standing there screaming. they saw them. the police did nothing prior. i would be so angry. i am just saying they cost so much money to the taxpayers trying to destroy donald trump when all it should be is to be on political reasons and not personal reasons. they are just destroying each other and the people. because of their personal opinions of each other. not because of their political and personal opinions should be on their own. they have no business calling each other names.

they have no business getting into people's families. the media is supposed to do that. the media is supposed to tear down people's families, not the people running to govern this country and to take care of its people. they do not need to be causing taxpayers to pay for what nancy pelosi and all of the others who are trying to destroy donald trump. that is a waste of money. that money could have been spent on other things. that is all i have to say. host: thank you for your call. teresa is on the line for democrats. good morning. caller: good morning. i am calling because i started watching donald trump when he was doing things like giving himself permission to do things against the law.

he said it so much that he said the silent part out loud. everybody else said, yeah, i agree! he gave permission for the people in texas to chase down the biden candidate bus that we saw. they are not thinking about other people. they are not doing anything. the spirit of america has been broken by the person who called out to get rid of the constitution. the agreement has been broken. the spirit of honor has been broken. like your mom says, when i am not there, you better act like i am. america has no more spirit, which is what putin and them want us to feel.

the spirit has been broken. trump gave permission for people to be attacked. i am sorry they came with the bullets out there. but like they said, secret service are going to stand there. that is all i have to say. the spirit of america was broken by him. now people do not even think about the spirit of the law. host: thanks. updates from the associated press saying investigators believe the gun used in trump's apparent assassination attempt bought by the suspect's father. two law enforcement officials tell investigators -- the associated press that investigators believe the weapon was bought by the father of thomas matthew crookes who has been identified as the shooter at least six month ago. federal agents are still working to understand when and how he

obtained the gun and gather information about him as they work to identify possible motive. officials are not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to the a.p. on the condition of anonymity. clay is on the line for republicans. caller: good morning. this is short and to the point. hopefully, this untimely and tragic incident will draw a of accountability for the current situation for which we are in. rhetoric versus threats. a hope and they wish for the path going forward, lessons learned from this outside the box. one of the previous caller's the lady from florida, said no

democrats ever makes any threats. within 24 hours of this untimely shooting, mr. biden was pretty very vocal that trump was an existential threat that must be stopped and he really went outside the box. it is not take him behind the barn. it is not maxine waters let's go to homes and restaurants and drag him out in streets or celebrities making a decapitated head or paintings of dead trump. by the grace of god, he was not killed. in closing, will this show a new line of accountability of rhetoric versus threats? thank you and god bless. host: thank you for your call. we have a qution on x from robert who asks, what has vladimir put said in regards to the attempt on trump's life?

i wonder. we have some of those responses. the associated press has some reporting on what various world leaders have said. china's response includes the chinese foreign ministry said in a statement china is concerned about the attack. president xi jinping has already extended his sympathies to trump. russian president vladimir putin has no plans at present to call trump according to the kremlin spokesman. "we do not at all think or believe the attempt to eliminate candidate trump was organized by the current government but the atmosphere created during the political struggle, the atmosphere around candidate trump that america is faced with today." let's hear from kevin in arkansas on the line for independents. good morning, kevin. caller: good morning.

two things i agree with. a lot of the blame needs to go to the media that keeps repeating things that are not true. they repeat lies about trump. this person radicalized by the rhetoric of the marxists. the new democratic marxist party. they must have chaos. they must have division to gain power. this is what you are going to get. this is the democrats' plan. they cannot win on their issues, their platform they cannot win on, so they have to tear down and demonize and call him anything in the world. it does not really matter.

c-span, you are kind of help that along when you let people go on and talk about like biden does. he started his campaign because trump said there are good people on both sides of the nazis. no, that was a lie. he did not say nazis. he said there were good people on both sides of the statute issue, and yet the lie is allowed to continue. the immediate needs to look at what it puts out if it does not want to be held responsible for lies leading to people's death. the other thing is this smacks of another inside job. they let that guy get up on the roof and did nothing about it? wow. host: we are still getting new information. until we get more, we do not want to spread too much of that. let's hear from beverly in florida on the line for democrats. caller: good morning.

i have my morning voice, i am sorry. i am a little bit frustrated because you have the ability to pull up information especially with regard to the bloodbath comment. are you able to correct that for us, please? host: what would you like me to look up? caller: when people say he fomented violence by using that word when it is a specific reference to cars. it had nothing to do with violence. the other thing, i am registered as a democrat but i have no intention of voting for them because of the weight they are behaving. when i saw whoopi goldberg speak on the tv the other day with joy read, it is horrible the things coming out of their mouths. it is really bad. i really hope it changes. thank you. host: thank you very much, beverly. here is a bit of a fact-checked

related to the bloodbath comment she was just referencing. this is from factcheck.org. speaking about the potential loss of auto manufacturing jobs to other countries, former president trump said if he is not reelected, it will be a bloodbath for the country. the trump campaign said trump was clearly using the term in the context of an economic bloodbath. if you watch and listen to the section, he was talking about the auto industry and tariffs. a spokesman for his campaign told the washington post, adding biden's will create an economic bloodbath for the auto industry and autoworkers. speaking at a rally on the grounds of the dayton international airport in ohio, trump said over the last few decades mexico has siphoned off

u.s. auto manufacturing jobs and accused china of building car manufacturing plants in mexico that will cost u.s. auto workers their jobs. we also have a message via text from sam in newsey. the cause of the divisivwe feel is clearly trump. since he his decision in 2015 to r president, he hate and division. purveyor of s ability to bring unity disqualifies him from the presidency, and he is reaping the consequences of his hate messages. lori is in florida on our line for republicans. good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. i am a republican. i was a democrat. i did change my party to republican. the bottom line here is when president trump was in office, he did change our whole world.

that is the economy. we were self-sufficient. the borders were secure. we were safer -- we were a safer nation. now, because of all the fake news, the propaganda, the calling names of president trump and making him out to be some kind of evil demon has created this hate and division in the country when all president trump has said is he wants to make america great again. there has been a lot of -- i believe there is a lot of people in high-power that do not want to lose that money or power and they will do anything they can to stop that. we need to reunite as a nation. we need to member our first responders, our military, people that keep us safe and our country safe and work hard to

reunite and make america great again. that is not a sin, or to be believing in god, it is not something wrong. everyone has a right to their own perfect union that this is a free country where people can say what they want without feel of retaliation that you are wrong or whichever. we need to unite and take care of those who have taken care of us in the past and secure our borders so we can be safe again and get people out of here that are illegal. this is illegal immigrants, not legal ones, illegal. host: thank you. we will try to get a couple more calls in.

rocco is in kansas on the line for independents. go ahead. caller: i would like to start this by saying i honestly cannot stand trump or biden. obviously, what happened with trump with the assassination attempt is horrible. no one should ever have to be feeling like their life is in danger or anything like that. but as i have listened to people comment and call, one thing i have heard them say is bringing god back into this country. as someone that is a christian, i believe if you believe in god, that is a great thing, but you cannot force it on other people. and to further that point, donald trump is not a godly man. if we go back to multiple incidents of things he has said and done and actions in the past, none of those are godly. i do not believe he believes in god. i think he uses it as a front to fool people because, frankly, a

lot of people he likes to get to vote for him happen to be christian and white. i think he uses that to bring voters in. but at the same time, i think our candidate pool has gotten infected. joe biden is not a good president in my opinion. donald trump was a worse president but still not a good president in my opinion. i think we need to bring in fresh people on both sides or we are never going to get anything done in this country. our biggest issue is that we are so divided that nothing ever happens. the fact of the matter is if we do not stop yelling at each other and hating each other on the other sides of the aisle, nothing will ever happen in this country. republicans need to go back to focusing more on policy. we understand that you like this or this. host: i'm going to try to get

one more person in before we have to end today. go ahead, keisha. caller: good morning. i want to pointut that i too do not agree with biden or trump. i wish we had someone else to choose from. however, for the first time in my life, i will switch from voting democrat and i will vote for trump. the thing about it is i can get past all of the rhetoric. the thing is, i am more focused on what is happening now. gas prices, live in. people can hardly live. the border, the illegal immigrants have more in their life than i who have been living here is a citizen all of my life. i am just voting on what i want

to change for me, how i live. if those people got in, what were they going to do? kill. yes, we need to minimize a lot of this hate going on. we need to focus on voting on what we think is going to be good for us, how we are living right now. right now, i and a lot of other americans are struggling. we are struggling. what can we do to change that? i cannot live with this. i have to try something else. transgender. biden has given transgenders more rights than women. i am a woman. host: we are running out of time, but thank you for your call. thank you for everyone who called in as we process this difficult moment on "washington journal."

we will be back tomorrow morning with another edition of "washington journal" at 7:00 eastern so please be sure to tune in again then. everyone, have as good of a rest of the day as you can. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]