Speaker 1: It is the fifteenth of July, the day after Bestile Day,
Speaker 1: one hundred and twelve days to go until the election,
Speaker 1: thirty five until the Democratic National Convention. The Republican National
Speaker 1: Convention is convening today in Milwaukee, the weekend after the
Speaker 1: assassination attempt on former President Trump. This is the warning.
Speaker 1: President Biden has called for a lowering of the temperature,
Speaker 1: a cooling of the rhetoric, and Donald Trump has called
Speaker 1: for unity. President Biden said, violence has no place in
Speaker 1: American politics. Let's stop there, and let's stay there for
Speaker 1: a minute. Certainly, that is the world that we should
Speaker 1: live in, but that is never the country that we
Speaker 1: have lived in. Violence has always been a part of
Speaker 1: America's life. Violence has stained, as my friend David from said,
Speaker 1: every page of American history with blood. Violence is something
Speaker 1: to be overcome, and there is something that is essential
Speaker 1: to understand. Violence begets violence, begets more violence, begets more violence.
Speaker 1: There is one thing that I have said over and
Speaker 1: over and over again for two years at the warning,
Speaker 1: and it's this. The path to defeating Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: deeply connected to being able to articulate and offer something
Speaker 1: that is better evil against violence is never better. Violence
Speaker 1: that begets more violence. Insanity that begets more insanity must
Speaker 1: be condemned. But this is an age of incitement, and
Speaker 1: the inciter in chief is the man who was shot.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is a man of violence and menace and cruelty.
Speaker 1: He has incited violence over and over again. When he
Speaker 1: called on his crowds to punch protesters in the face.
Speaker 1: When he told the Proud Boys to stand back and
Speaker 1: be ready, the Proud Boys, by that time had already
Speaker 1: marauded through America's streets, beating people. Donald Trump laughed and
Speaker 1: joked about Paul Pelosi, an eighty year old man beaten
Speaker 1: in his home, the husband of the Speaker of the House.
Speaker 1: Over and over again, the Maga fascist cause has incited violence.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, in the immediate aftermath of surviving an assassin's
Speaker 1: bullet by an inch, rose to his feet, not reborn,
Speaker 1: not chastened, not ready to preach a message of love
Speaker 1: and reconciliation, but rather, with a clinched fist, he said, fight, Fight, Fight.
Speaker 1: It is an iconic moment, perhaps among the most in
Speaker 1: the nation's history. But who is it that this man
Speaker 1: calling for unity is exhorting to fight. Who is supposed
Speaker 1: to fight whom? And how do we know when the
Speaker 1: fight is over? How do we know when the fight
Speaker 1: is started? Why do we want to fight each other?
Speaker 1: We must not. Shortly before the United States was to
Speaker 1: suffer an apocalypse of death six to eight hundred thousand
Speaker 1: killed in a nation of thirty four million in Civil War.
Speaker 1: Shortly before it began, Abraham Lincoln said to the country,
Speaker 1: we must be friends, and we must What happened in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania was an unconscionable criminal act, and heads must roll
Speaker 1: at the Secret Service. This is one of the greatest
Speaker 1: security failings in American history by a federal law enforcement agency.
Speaker 1: How did a twenty year old gunman wind up with
Speaker 1: a rifle pointed at the head of the Republican nominee
Speaker 1: and a former president of the United States from a
Speaker 1: rooftop one hundred and fifty yards away. And let's be clear,
Speaker 1: people died a fire chief an American citizen, I don't
Speaker 1: know why so many of my fellow Americans are enamored
Speaker 1: by a despotic bully with authoritarian tendencies like Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: who long ago crossed the line into fascism. I don't know.
Speaker 1: As somebody who grew up in New Jersey. How they
Speaker 1: couldn conceivably be hoodwinked by this con man. But many are.
Speaker 1: The American people alone have the right to decide who
Speaker 1: leads this nation, and it must never be cheated or
Speaker 1: taken from them, not by a bullet, not by a
Speaker 1: foreign power, not by anybody, because to be an American
Speaker 1: is to be part of something. We are citizens of
Speaker 1: the greatest republic in all of world history. I'm going
Speaker 1: to leave this message with a final warning. It's the
Speaker 1: true face of MAGA. It's the words of JD. Vance.
Speaker 1: Read them, appreciate them. The retribution that Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: talking about that he is promised he will now feel
Speaker 1: justified in delivering unless he is ready and prepared to
Speaker 1: repent openly and publicly of all of his malice and
Speaker 1: all of his intimations of violence. But he won't. There
Speaker 1: is something, though, that deserves serious consideration. If Donald Trump
Speaker 1: were the president and this happened, If Donald Trump had
Speaker 1: a Republican Congress and this happened, what would have happened
Speaker 1: in the country, Judging by the rhetoric of a Marjorie
Speaker 1: Taylor Green, would there have been mass arrests, retaliatory violence?
Speaker 1: The military deployed to the streets. Donald Trump's given us
Speaker 1: a lot of clues. None of this is speculation. These
Speaker 1: are dramatic moments and events, but it plays out on
Speaker 1: a stage that we have watched unchanged for nine years.
Speaker 1: And now the bill is coming due, and now we
Speaker 1: must make a choice. The crisis in the Biden campaign
Speaker 1: is fundamentally because President Biden can't speak and articulate a
Speaker 1: vision that is better. And now the politics of the
Speaker 1: race have cemented even harder. Donald Trump's candidacy has been
Speaker 1: built upon two rocks. The first is that he's a victim.
Speaker 1: His persecution complex is unreal, but he has made grievance
Speaker 1: and victimization or virtue. And now he's been bloodied in
Speaker 1: a sense, almost martyred, but having survived, he will claim
Speaker 1: as he has, like Marco Rubio, has God's protection and dominion.
Speaker 1: And the second thing that Trump talks about, his second
Speaker 1: rock a foundation, is strength, strong leader. And he's run
Speaker 1: relentlessly against Joe Biden as a feeble old man, a
Speaker 1: caricature of a declining elderly man, a man who can't
Speaker 1: walk up the steps on Air Force one all the way,
Speaker 1: so he has to use the short ladder. But Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: when he shot within seconds, rises to his feet, pumps
Speaker 1: his fists in the air and says fight, fight, fight,
Speaker 1: And there you have it. That contrast is not politically
Speaker 1: survivable for Joe Biden and for the Democratic Party with
Speaker 1: much at stake. Jd Vance said that Joe Biden was
Speaker 1: at fault for the assassin's bullet because he has said
Speaker 1: that this election is existential. It is existential. Jd Vance
Speaker 1: said that Joe Biden was to blame because he has
Speaker 1: said that Donald Trump is a fascist. The president called
Speaker 1: him a fascist because Donald Trump is a fascist. Jd
Speaker 1: Vance said this happened because democracy is on the line.
Speaker 1: But jd Vance has said democracy is something that it's
Speaker 1: time to move past. Jd Vance like, Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: a fascist and now this attack will be used as
Speaker 1: a smoke screen in the name of unity to further
Speaker 1: quash dissent, and that scam never be bought into by
Speaker 1: any good American because the stakes of this election have
Speaker 1: not changed an iota. What has changed is the leading
Speaker 1: purveyor of division and violence was attacked by violence. And
Speaker 1: that reality one hundred and twelve days from the election
Speaker 1: is very volatile and let's be clear. The Republican Convention
Speaker 1: is not a gathering of good hearted Americans yearning for reconciliation.
Speaker 1: It is a convocation of fascists yearning for political power,
Speaker 1: that want to strip rights away from Black Americans, gay Americans,
Speaker 1: female Americans. And we must say no. And nobody should
Speaker 1: be lectured that this moment demands submission in the face
Speaker 1: of the worst cause since Jim Crow in the Confederacy.
Speaker 1: What this moment requires is defiance against Hape, defiance against
Speaker 1: trump Ism. And it's time to start talking about this
Speaker 1: country aspirationally again, to start looking to the future boldly,
Speaker 1: because that is where we move beyond this wretched, rancid,
Speaker 1: vile time. This is the warning. I'm Steve Schmidt. This
Speaker 1: is the warning, and I invite you to join. Subscribe
Speaker 1: on our substack, on our YouTube channel, follow us. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the community.