WEBVTT - Assassinations, insurrections and massacres: an American story 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:03.080 If you want to really see something that said, take 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:04.280 a look at what happened. 0:00:06.280 --> 0:00:07.280 From Schwartz Media. 0:00:07.520 --> 0:00:12.120 I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. 0:00:12.520 --> 0:00:16.000 Former President Trump says he is okay after being hit 0:00:16.079 --> 0:00:19.040 by a bullet just minutes into giving a speech at 0:00:19.079 --> 0:00:21.079 a Pennsylvania rally. 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:27.280 So we're standing there, you know, we're pointing at the 0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:28.560 guy crowing up the roof. 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:30.400 And he had a gun, right, he had a rifle. 0:00:30.680 --> 0:00:32.320 We could clearly see him with a rifle. 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:36.000 The shooter has been killed, and one person attending the 0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:39.559 rally was killed. Two others were injured in the shooting. 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:43.800 The assassination attempt against Donald Trump was the most serious 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:47.040 attack on a president or candidate in more than forty years. 0:00:47.200 --> 0:00:49.680 There's no place in America for this kind of violence. 0:00:49.760 --> 0:00:52.919 It's sick. It's sick. It's one of the reason why 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:54.279 wars unite this country. 0:00:54.520 --> 0:00:58.280 Leaders from both parties have condemned the attack and repeated 0:00:58.280 --> 0:01:01.920 the message that political violence has no place in America. 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:03.560 But history shows otherwise. 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:04.880 Today. 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:09.040 Nick Bryant, veteran foreign correspondent and author of The Forever War, 0:01:09.400 --> 0:01:13.560 America's unending conflict with itself, on the inevitability of this 0:01:13.640 --> 0:01:16.640 moment and how it will shape the final months of 0:01:16.680 --> 0:01:25.640 the US election campaign that's coming up. 0:01:26.080 --> 0:01:37.479 It's Tuesday, July sixteenth. 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:40.360 Nick, we go to the moment that you heard that 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:44.000 Donald Trump had been shot at What was your first thought? 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:48.200 I found myself revisiting a formulation that I used so 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:52.400 often while I was covering the Trump presidency for the BBC. 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:58.240 This was shocking, but not surprising. This had been the 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:02.520 direction of travel of American politics for many years, and 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:07.000 what happened in Pennsylvania was the coming together of so 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:13.960 many American problems gun violence, political violence, conspiratorialism, the kind 0:02:13.960 --> 0:02:17.080 of partisan rage that we have seen really not just 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:22.600 for the last few years, but increasingly for decades now. Yeah, 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:27.040 it really was shocking to see the blooded face of 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:30.720 a former US president. It was shocking to think that 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:34.720 a young gunman could out with the Secret Service. It 0:02:34.840 --> 0:02:38.760 was shocking to see him being bundled off stage, and 0:02:38.960 --> 0:02:43.240 to see that instantly iconographic moment where he punched the 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:45.320 air and shouted fight fight. 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:47.960 But it didn't surprise me. 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:51.680 Can you tell me a bit more about why it 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:55.040 wasn't surprising and other things that we've seen in recent 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:57.480 years that give this moment context well. 0:02:57.520 --> 0:03:00.480 To begin with, gun violence has become so depressingly routine 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:02.800 and fueled by the easy access. 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:03.880 To high powered weaponry. 0:03:03.919 --> 0:03:06.000 An irony of the shooting in Pennsylvania was that it 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:07.919 was carried out with an AAR fifteen, and a weapon 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:12.200 that has become especially popular amongst gun enthusiasts on the 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:16.000 right because it's the firearm that gun control advocates most 0:03:16.120 --> 0:03:20.880 want to ban. Political violence, we have seen a really 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:27.720 alarming uptick in that in recent times Barack Obama used 0:03:27.720 --> 0:03:31.240 to get thirty death threats a day. Michelle Obama became 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:34.280 the first first lady in US history to have assigned 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:37.840 to her Secret Service detail the kind of combat troops 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:42.560 that we saw on stage on Saturday in Pennsylvania. These 0:03:42.880 --> 0:03:45.880 Secret Service agents that literally looked like special forces with 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:48.320 their helmets and their military fatigues. 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:51.200 We have seen attacks. 0:03:50.760 --> 0:03:56.320 On a Republican congressional baseball team that was practicing in Virginia. 0:03:56.680 --> 0:04:02.120 Today, two American institutions literally under fire, our national pastime 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:06.840 and our elected officials. A barrage of gunfire and a 0:04:06.880 --> 0:04:11.480 baseball field right outside Washington, d C. As Republican members 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:15.280 of Congress practiced for their annual game against the Democrats. 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:19.960 We've seen that kidnap attempt on Governor Gretchen Whitner in Michigan. 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:22.360 We're going to begin tonight with that alleged terror plot 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:25.520 and the chilling plan. The FBI says it stopped before 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:27.280 it could be carried out up and. 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:31.200 Of course we've seen January the sixth and the attempt 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:36.400 by Trump's supporters that his urging to overturn the election violently. 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:38.919 It is hard to put into words what exactly we 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:42.880 witnessed today because we've not seen this before. Thousand storming 0:04:42.880 --> 0:04:45.640 the capital after a rally with President Trump, during which 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:48.120 he urged them to march on the Capitol where a 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:51.080 joint session of Congress was debating and working to certify 0:04:51.120 --> 0:04:53.440 the election as our democracy dictates. 0:04:53.720 --> 0:04:57.239 And so this didn't come as a great surprise because 0:04:57.720 --> 0:05:00.839 gun violence and political violence was been the direction of 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:01.279 travel for. 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:04.159 Years, and you've spent a large part of your career 0:05:04.279 --> 0:05:09.160 trying to understand political violence in America. Can you tell 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:12.320 me about where that fascination, where it begins for you? 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:14.600 Well, as a kid, I was fascinated with Kennedy. 0:05:15.040 --> 0:05:17.040 Good afternoon, ladies, and John On and you'll excuse the fact 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:20.040 that I'm out of breath. But about ten or fifteen 0:05:20.080 --> 0:05:23.279 minutes ago, a tragic thing, from all indications at this point, 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:24.440 has happened in the city of Dallas. 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:28.360 I was fascinated by his assassination in my early years, 0:05:29.080 --> 0:05:32.240 and I kind of bought into what I call the 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:35.560 lone gunman theory of post war American history, that America 0:05:35.600 --> 0:05:38.559 lost its innocence the moment that John F. Kennedy was killed. 0:05:38.600 --> 0:05:40.919 On November the twenty second, nineteen sixty. 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:43.440 Three, President Kennedy and Governor John Colony have been cut 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:47.279 down by assassin's bullets in downtown Dallas. They were riding 0:05:47.320 --> 0:05:49.839 an open automobile when the shots were fired. The President, 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:52.479 who lent body carried in the arms of his wife, Jacqueline, 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:55.360 has rushed to Parkland Hospital, And if you'll excuse me, 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:57.000 if I give some directions. 0:05:56.760 --> 0:05:59.320 It seemed to my young self that that was when 0:05:59.320 --> 0:06:02.000 things really went wrong for America. After it, of course, 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:04.280 you had of Vietnam, you had Watergate, you had the 0:06:04.920 --> 0:06:07.560 race ruts of the late nineteen sixties. But you know, 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:09.200 the more I got to know about Kennedy, the more 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:12.880 I got to know about America. I realized that America 0:06:13.360 --> 0:06:16.000 on the day after John F. Kennedy's death wasn't that 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:19.159 much different from America in the days leading up to 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:23.359 John F. Kennedy's death. This wasn't a shock event. The 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:27.880 very morning that Kennedy arrived in Dallas, members of the 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:32.480 extreme right John Birch Society published a wanted poster saying 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:36.320 Kennedy was wanted for treason. They regarded him as a communist. 0:06:36.760 --> 0:06:39.400 Dallas was called the City of Hate because it was 0:06:39.440 --> 0:06:42.040 a home to so many right wing fanatics. 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:43.960 All the ingredients that. 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:47.040 Were evident on November the twenty second, nineteen sixty three, 0:06:47.600 --> 0:06:49.839 which was a day Kennedy was killed, that sort of 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:53.880 poisonous brew, all of those ingredients have been evident pretty 0:06:53.920 --> 0:06:55.799 much on every single day in American history. 0:06:56.480 --> 0:06:56.680 You know. 0:06:56.760 --> 0:06:59.520 They came to the four again on January the sixth 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:02.919 into twenty one with the storming of the Capitol, and 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:06.920 they came to the four again on July thirteenth, twenty 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:11.360 twenty four, the day that Donald Trump survived his assassination attempt. 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:15.840 And after the assassination of John F. Kennedy as well 0:07:15.880 --> 0:07:18.920 as Martin Luther King in the sixties, the president at 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:22.720 the time, Lyndon B. Johnson, he launched an investigation. He 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:27.000 tasked this group of experts with finding out why this 0:07:27.160 --> 0:07:30.440 was happening, why this political violence was occurring. Can you 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:32.280 tell me about what they discovered. 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:36.240 Yeah, this was a really interesting moment for America. The 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:40.680 nineteen sixties had been really violent. You know, you had 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:43.080 the murders of the Kennedy brothers, you had the assassination 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:46.680 of Martin Linter King, you had the assassination of Malcolm X. 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:51.000 This was a particularly murderous decade and Linda Johnson wanted 0:07:51.000 --> 0:07:53.520 to explore why America was plagued by so much violence, 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:57.480 and he appointed this panel of scholars to undertake what 0:07:57.600 --> 0:08:01.280 was really a quest for understanding. And what they came 0:08:01.360 --> 0:08:06.440 back with was a sense that racism had always been 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:09.280 the cause of a lot of violence and political violence 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:13.120 in America. So too the frontier experience, as they put it, 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:17.440 of suppressing Native Americans and Mexicans. There was a tradition 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:20.640 that they described a vigilante justice. 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:24.080 The very manner of America's founding. 0:08:24.440 --> 0:08:29.160 Through glorious revolution, through this battle for independence against the British, 0:08:29.280 --> 0:08:32.200 also made it prone to violence, and it also created 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:37.240 the sense Ruby that political violence was legitimate. It's interesting 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:40.000 that on January the sixth, many of the insurrectionists were 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:45.560 chanting seventeen seventy six. They really believed that they weren't seditionists, 0:08:45.600 --> 0:08:50.000 they were patriots acting in the spirit of the American Revolution. 0:08:50.640 --> 0:08:55.440 The report also said that like all nations, America suffered 0:08:55.480 --> 0:08:59.640 from a kind of historical amnesia or selective recollection, as 0:08:59.640 --> 0:09:03.520 they put that masked unpleasant traumas of the past. So 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:06.640 what they're essentially saying was that a positive sense of 0:09:06.679 --> 0:09:12.000 American exceptionalism blinded Americans to the negative side of American 0:09:12.040 --> 0:09:16.200 exceptionalism and what they described as a rather bloody minded 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:18.640 people in both action and reaction. 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:23.240 That's interesting because I think we're seeing something similar play 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:27.520 out now. We're hearing politicians from both sides, not just Democrats, 0:09:27.559 --> 0:09:31.400 saying that this is not who we are. But what 0:09:31.400 --> 0:09:34.400 you're saying is, actually, this is exactly what the US 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:36.440 is and what it always has been. 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:41.199 Very quickly after the Trump assassination attempt, Joe Biden came 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:43.439 out and said, and I quote, the idea that there's 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:46.400 political violence or violence in America like this is just 0:09:46.920 --> 0:09:50.160 unheard of. But that was a statement that spoke not 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:54.160 so much of his cognitive decline, but rather America's historical amnesia. 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:59.760 This aversion to confronting its murderous past. Because political violence 0:09:59.880 --> 0:10:05.120 is a core and continual strand of the national story. 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:06.600 It is as American as. 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:09.600 Apple piet if you go back to the founding days 0:10:09.640 --> 0:10:13.480 of the American public has been a regular feature, a 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:17.439 routine feature of politics and national life in America. 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:34.320 After the break, how this moment changes the election? Nick 0:10:34.760 --> 0:10:38.880 Donald Trump has just survived an assassination attempt, and he 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:41.760 is not the first politician in America to have an 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:45.000 attempt on his life. I'm interested, though, in the things 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:49.680 that are unique today. If we look, for example, at 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:53.240 the speed in which news unfolds, I mean, we watched 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:57.120 this happen live within minutes it had been memed, and 0:10:57.160 --> 0:11:01.439 then these alternate realities are being formed online. So are 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:03.880 we in uncharted territory here? 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:07.160 I mean you look back to the Kennedy assassination, and 0:11:07.200 --> 0:11:10.600 you remember that just days afterwards, Lee Harvey Oswald, his 0:11:10.640 --> 0:11:15.560 alleged assassin, was literally killed live on American television. Obviously 0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:17.439 he didn't have social media about them, but you had 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:20.559 mass media, and in those days it was television. 0:11:23.720 --> 0:11:27.080 Shud Criswald has been a. 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:32.080 Shrub when we think about the conspiratorialism that emerged so 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:38.360 quickly after this assassination attempt on Trump, again, that's hardly new. 0:11:39.600 --> 0:11:41.880 Literally the day that John F. Kennedy was killed, he 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:44.920 was on his way to deliver a speech that very 0:11:44.960 --> 0:11:49.640 afternoon where he was going to warn against distorted realities 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:54.679 and misinformation. He even was going to use that term misinformation. 0:11:55.240 --> 0:11:58.360 And on the very eve of John F. Kennedy's assassination, 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:04.200 a very famous American political scientists called Richard Hofstadder delivered 0:12:04.200 --> 0:12:08.920 a very bleique lecture at Oxford University where he spoke 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:13.240 of a paranoid style in American politics. It's become a 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:17.720 seminal essay. It's quoted over and over during the Trump years. 0:12:18.200 --> 0:12:21.439 And he spoke of a politics that was dominated by 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:27.760 uncommonly angry minds. And he spoke again of the kind 0:12:27.800 --> 0:12:33.720 of conspiratorialism that was fueling that kind of politics. So 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:38.920 once again, the means of kind of communication are different, 0:12:39.800 --> 0:12:41.680 but in many ways the messaging is the same. 0:12:42.800 --> 0:12:46.679 And so given that, what do you think that this 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:51.760 assassination attempt will become in the narrative of the Trump 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:55.080 campaign and his attempt to regain the presidency. What kind 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:58.240 of myth making do you think we're willing to hear 0:12:58.280 --> 0:12:59.640 about this in the coming weeks. 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:05.439 It's the defining moment for Donald Trump, and that iconic 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:09.559 image of him punching the air with the American flag 0:13:10.200 --> 0:13:16.720 flying above him will become the defining image. It makes 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:19.800 the cult of Donald Trump even more cult like. 0:13:20.559 --> 0:13:21.479 And I was also. 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:26.400 Struck by the religiosity of the moment, this idea that 0:13:26.480 --> 0:13:31.079 God had spared Donald Trump, which reinforces a sense, certainly 0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:34.199 amongst the evangelical Christians who are some of his biggest backers, 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:36.320 that Donald Trump is the chosen one. 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:38.559 I mean, it unites the Republican Party. 0:13:39.200 --> 0:13:42.040 It makes it much harder for a deeply divided Democratic 0:13:42.080 --> 0:13:44.840 Party now to demonize Donald Trump in the way that 0:13:44.880 --> 0:13:47.840 they needed to do to turn this into election on 0:13:47.960 --> 0:13:53.640 him rather than Joe Biden. I don't necessarily think that 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:55.720 the election is over. I mean many of us thought 0:13:55.720 --> 0:13:58.440 the election was over in twenty sixteen when the Access 0:13:58.480 --> 0:14:00.800 Hollywood tape came out and show him sort of boasting 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:03.600 about sexually molesting women. Many of us just thought Trump 0:14:03.600 --> 0:14:06.559 couldn't come back from there. We just don't know what's 0:14:06.600 --> 0:14:09.800 going to happen between now an election day in November. 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:15.240 Nick, thank you so much for your time. 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:18.240 Ruby, thanks for having me on. It's been good to 0:14:18.240 --> 0:14:18.679 talk to you. 0:14:32.080 --> 0:14:35.040 Also in the news today, Donald Trump has appeared at 0:14:35.040 --> 0:14:38.600 the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. He's called on his 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:42.680 followers to stand united and show our true character as Americans, 0:14:43.160 --> 0:14:46.360 saying it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening. 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:49.480 As he recovers from the assassination attempt on his life, 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:53.320 FBI investigators are continuing to look into the background of 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:57.600 the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks to find a motive, and 0:14:57.760 --> 0:15:00.720 King Charles and Queen Camilla have confirmed they'll be visiting 0:15:00.760 --> 0:15:04.760 Australia and Samoa this October. The pair's visit will include 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:08.360 engagements in New South Wales and the Act, but they've 0:15:08.360 --> 0:15:11.040 called off a proposed trip to New Zealand following health 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:15.600 advice as the King recovers from his cancer diagnosis. It 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:18.080 marks the first visit from a reigning monarch since Queen 0:15:18.080 --> 0:15:22.960 Elizabeth visited Australia in twenty eleven. I'm Ruby Jones. 0:15:23.000 --> 0:15:26.119 Thanks for listening, See you tomorrow.