TRANSCRIPT:
Michael Medved: And another great day in this greatest nation on God's green earth. A great nation that is, however, greatly plagued by a pandemic of political violence and threats of political violence. That's the subject of the latest column by Peter Baker, who is the chief White House correspondent for the New York Times. It is always an honor to have him on our show.
His most recent column talks about this latest apparent assassination attempt and some of the threats of violence in Springfield, OH. Bomb threats that cleared out two different elementary schools. What President Trump said is that the would-be assassin believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris and acted on it: “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at when I am the one who is going to save the country. And they are the ones destroying the country both from the inside and out.”
Peter Baker, you pointed out the contradiction in that brief statement by President Trump, as I did. And maybe you could specify, why is it contradictory to attack opponents for wanting to destroy the country, and at the same time to say that their rhetoric is leading people to violence?
Peter Baker: Well, thanks for having me. And first of all, of course, we don't know the motivation of this guy yet necessarily. We ought to be careful about overstating what we know. We do seem to see from an online, you know, social media post, he had described himself as a 2016 Trump supporter who became disaffected and began to believe that Trump was “not a good president,” “couldn't wait for him to go,” he said. So that may or may not tell us what's going on. But more broadly, I think to your point, you're right that the former president says they—Democrats—are “fomenting violence” by saying that “I, Trump, am a threat to democracy.” They “want to destroy the country” and “they are the enemy within.” That's the other phrase he used in that Fox interview. So if language like “a threat to democracy” is provoking violence, then why is “destroying the country” and “enemies within” not also provoking violence? There's no reflection there on his part about whether or not his own language is the kind of language he's complaining about the other side using.
Michael Medved: Other than these would-be assassinations and then the bomb threats—which apparently have gotten fairly serious in Springfield, OH where they're allegedly eating cats and dogs—what do they say about Americans' feelings about this election?
Peter Baker: Yeah, I mean, look, the temperatures are rising here, right? We're in a period where our emotions are at a high pitch, anger is prevalent, is thick in the air. I think, you know, we've seen political violence at various points in our history in the United States going back to the beginning. But we are certainly in a moment where it seems to be a prevalent part of the landscape where you're right, the former president's comments last week demonizing the Haitian migrants in Springfield, OH seems to have possibly had something to do with the 33 bomb threats the Ohio governor, Mike Dewan, said they've had. Bomb threats forcing the evacuations of schools, City Hall, other government facilities, and the cancellation of a community event because people were afraid of what might happen. So we are in a moment where this seems to be increasingly just part of our daily politics.
Michael Medved: And what is the political impact of all of this? One would think that if there are threats of violence on the extremes, it would lead people to a more moderate position. But where is that more moderate position in this election campaign?
Peter Baker: It's hard to see where it is. We've had now two—seemingly, assuming yesterday was an attempted assassination, as the FBI says, it's usually the word apparent. You don't charge them with that. But assuming these are two attempted assassinations in just two months, that's extraordinary, right? And it didn't seem to be after Butler in July that it did much to change the conversation or change the atmosphere. We have not seen any kind of ratcheting down of the tension or efforts to try to come together to stop political violence. And I think that you're not likely to see that happen out of yesterday's incident either. Yesterday he wasn't fortunately even hit. Last time he was hit, very close. A bullet could have done much worse damage. And yet that didn't actually shock the country enough to make a sustained change.
Michael Medved: One of the things that I found out about the assassinations that were separated by less than three weeks for Gerald Ford, where he was the target of attempted assassination from Squeaky Frum, who was a Manson follower, and then from a five-times-divorced mother of four, who also attempted to shoot him, actually got shots off and almost killed him, named Sarah Jane Moore. After that happened, within three weeks of one another, he was required by the Secret Service to wear a bulletproof vest whenever he came out in public. Do you think President Trump would entertain the same idea?
Peter Baker: You know, I don't think so. He's been asked in the past. He doesn't like wearing one. I think he's resisted that. It’s not very comfortable, especially in warm rally sites. But maybe he has to. Maybe that's the thing to do at this point. I think there's going to be some soul-searching about how much security you give to a person who's not a president but was a president and may be president again. We don't have the same level for a non-sitting president. For obvious reasons, the sitting president is the most important person that any Secret Service agency can protect. But given what's happened these last months, you're hearing a lot of questions being asked in Washington on both sides of the aisle about whether what the Secret Service is doing is enough, whether they need more resources, whether they need to be changing protocols.
Michael Medved: And there's a statement that Elon Musk put on X which said, “No one is even trying to assassinate Biden and Kamala.” And he later took that down, said it was just a joke. Your comment on his statement?
Peter Baker: It doesn't take much to understand that nobody would see that as a joke, or a lot of people at least wouldn't see that as a joke. It's a little surprising that a grown person who spends a lot of time on social media wouldn't understand how that might be received, even if he did think it was somehow funny. But that's the nature of the moment, right? That course conversation like that is somehow part and parcel of our national debate. And he did take it down, and that's good, obviously. But why anybody thought that was a good idea to put up in the first place is hard to imagine.
Michael Medved: Even Elon Musk. Okay, last question. Do you think that this cause of trying to drain the violence and the polarization and the bitterness and the anger, do you think that that cause of trying to tamp down the temperatures would be contributed to if President Trump does relent and agrees to another debate?
Peter Baker: I think there are lots of reasons they should agree to another debate anyway. But certainly they could demonstrate through a debate a different level of discourse if they wanted to. It's hard to say. I mean, look, that's the biggest audience you're going to get between now and Election Day. You had almost 70 million last week. If they did it again, a lot of people would be paying attention. You can reach a lot of Americans who are about to cast ballots.
Michael Medved: I do think it would be good for the country, just as your columns always are, with their perspective and their grip on sanity.
Peter Baker on the Modern Era of Political Violence