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Who is Trump’s “would-be assassin”… were there security failings at DC shooting?
00:34:18
The US president was evacuated from the White House Correspondents Dinner
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- [00:00]
Justin Webb
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Kai Wright
I'm Kai Wright.
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Sarah Smith
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Kai Wright
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Justin Webb
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Kai Wright
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Sarah Smith
We don't have billionaires telling us what to say.
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Kai Wright
Stateside with Kai and Carter will come out three times a week, Monday, Wednesday
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Donald Trump
and Friday, starting May 13.
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Sarah Smith
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- [00:35]
Donald Trump
It's always shocking when something like this happens. Happened to me a little bit, and that never changes the fact we were sitting right next to each other, the first lady on my right, and I heard a noise and sort of thought it was a tray. I thought it was a tray going down, you know, I've heard that tray many times and it was pretty loud noise and it was from quite far away. He hadn't reached the area at all. They really got him. But. So it was quite far away. But it was a gun. And some people really understood that pretty quickly. Other people didn't. I was watching to see what was happening. Probably should have gone down even faster. Melania was very cognizant, I think, of what happened. I think she knew immediately what happened. She was saying, that's a bad noise. And we were whisked away along with other people, but we were really whisked away.
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Sarah Smith
President Trump there, speaking from the White House last night, just an hour or so after the incident that he's describing there. And he does sound a bit shaken, but who wouldn't be in the circumstances? The third serious assassination attempt against him in less than two years. He says he was the likely target. There are a lot of questions to be asked about what happened last night, the security failures, the implications of it and the motives. Many issues for us to get into in this special edition. Welcome to AmericasT.
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Kai Wright
AmericasT, AmericasT from BBC News.
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Donald Trump
You hear that? Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money.
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Justin Webb
We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it.
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Kai Wright
This is a big cover up and this administration is engaged in it.
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Sarah Smith
This guy has trumped derangement syndrome.
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Donald Trump
I have four words for you. Turn the volume up.
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Sarah Smith
Hello, it's Sarah here. Unusually for once, in what Justin likes to call the worldwide headquarters of AmericaSt in BBC New Broadcasting House.
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Justin Webb
Yes, Sarah, it's an unusual thing for you to be there, but of course it is an unusual day. In as much as we've got sudden news to Talk about. So you're there and I'm at home in also in London, but in South London. And I should say the time as well at the moment because things will carry on and as usual, events will be added to when it comes to information. So we are talking at 7 o' clock in the evening on Sunday in London, and we're going to talk in just a second to our colleague Tom Bateman, who was actually in the room when all of this happened. But I suppose we should kick off, Sarah, with just a word or two. I mean, number one, about what the White House Correspondent's Dinner is, because it is a big event, isn't it?
- [03:28]
Sarah Smith
Yes, it is. It's about two and a half thousand people gathered together in the ballroom of the Hilton Hotel in Washington. And traditionally it is attended by the president, by many of the senior members of the Cabinet, the vice president. And it's an opportunity for the president and the press to have a little bit more fun and set aside the adversarial nature of the relationship that there often is and make a few jokes at each other's expenses. Donald Trump, though, has eschewed all of that normally. So he didn't come at all during his first term. He didn't come last year, but at the last minute he changed his mind and decided that he was going to come this year. And he'd prepared a pretty fiery speech where he was going to take quite a few potshots at the press alongside Donald Trump, J.D. vance, the vice President, the first lady cabinet members, including Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, RFK Jr. The health secretary, Kash Patel, the head of the FBI. And at this event, people had sat down, I think were just starting their starters, so to speak, their burrata salad, I believe it was, when they heard a very loud crash. And then all of a sudden this turned into a major security incident.
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Justin Webb
Yeah. Described by Jeff Carroll, who's the interim chief of police for the Metropolitan Police Department. This is the Washington, D.C. metropolitan Police Department, who described what he had been told about what happened from the scene.
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Jeff Carroll
As the mayor mentioned, at approximately 8:36 tonight, an individual charged a US Secret Service checkpoint here in the lobby area of the hotel. He was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and multiple knives. As he ran through that checkpoint, members of law enforcement from the United States Secret Service intercepted that individual. This is a very preliminary investigation at this point. We do know that law enforcement exchanged gunfire with individual. We do know that a U.S. secret Service uniform Division officer was struck in his vest. He was transported to the local hospital for treatment. He seems to be in good spirits at this time. The suspect in this case, he was not struck by gunfire. However, he was transported to a local hospital to be evaluated. Again, we're very early in the investigation. We have members of the United States Secret Service, the Metropolitan Police Department department and the FBI here to continue to investigate this matter. But at this point, it does appear he is a lone actor, a lone gunman. There does not appear to be any sort of danger to the public at this time. However, we are continuing to investigate this matter.
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Justin Webb
Okay, let's hear from Tom Bateman, then, our BBC colleague who was there in the room. Tom, tell us.
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Kai Wright
Yeah, hi, guys. It is great to be with you. And I was there at the dinner last night, as were, I mean, you know, two and a half thousand people, including most of the senior levels of the American government and just about every journalist you can think of in Washington. And so this extraordinary moment, really, you know, where all hell broke loose in the room and we were ending up cowering under tables as the President, the vice president, the first lady were bundled off the stage.
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Sarah Smith
Now, obviously, as you were going in, you didn't know there was going to be a security incident. You must presumably have had to pass through some level of security. Tell us what that was like arriving at the dinner.
- [06:43]
Kai Wright
Well, you do. And, you know, I mean, both of you have been to this event in the past, and I've been to it once before, two years ago, and basically it was exactly the same format, which is you get a little card ticket which doesn't have your name on it. It has a table number, but there's no name on that. It's just basically the invite. And you're told by the White House Correspondents association to bring some photographic ID to prove you are who you are. But basically what happens is at the Washington Hilton, there's always a huge traffic jam. And it is basically surprisingly easy to get, first of all, very close to the hotel. You flash your ticket to somebody who is a member of security. I don't think they're either the hotel staff or kind of hired security. This didn't feel like Secret Service at that point. So you're past that very easy sort of perimeter. Hotel guests can obviously have already either inside the hotel or can pass through that by showing their room cards. And then basically, once you're in the hotel, you're in the hotel. And there is a perimeter of metal detectors, you know, security scanners on this sort of mezzanine level above the ballroom. And I was there with a colleague. We went up to the metal detector. It was really relaxed, was asked to take everything out of my pocket. So I didn't have a bag. And you put it on the side. But there was no metal detector for bags. So bags you just put on a table at the side of the security arch, and they were checking those by hand, and then you just walk through. Now, at no point did anyone actually check id. You know, we'd been told to bring photographic id, but nobody asked for it, so nobody actually knew who I was. And the name's not on the ticket. So you go through really relaxed. And I was actually. I remember thinking it's quite surprisingly, sort of, you know, less stringent than you might find elsewhere, given who is in that room. I mean, you've got the President of the United States about to be there, the vice president. In fact, there were, we think, up to eighth in the line of succession for the presidency, minus one person, but at least the top three, you know, the President, vice President, speaker of the House, all about to be in that room. And I just remember thinking this is kind of not quite what you'd expect.
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Justin Webb
So you're suggesting oddly lax security getting in. But I think another set of questions is going to be asked, isn't it, about the security surrounding those people who had already checked into their hotel? Because it seem that the suspect. And we'll talk a bit more about him in a second, it seems that the suspect may well have been staying in the hotel and have brought weapons that he had with him into the hotel, which, again, is just staggering, isn't it? So however much the Secret Service behaved bravely, in the seconds that you watch them react, Tom, there are going to be questions, aren't there?
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Kai Wright
Absolutely. Because, you know, this whole issue of, you know, what's the point of checking people outside the hotel if you've got hundreds or thousands of guests in a hotel that might have checked in the day before that haven't gone through that same layer of security? And actually, it's something. I mean, you know, this is a real question about diplomatic security, because, I mean, I've done a lot of trips with the Secretary of State, with Anthony Blinken and then Marco Rubio. And this is always an issue because you're always staying in hotels. Often they book them, you know, the last minute if this is, you know, a sort of sudden bilateral meeting he has to rush to or something, and they might block, book out a part of the hotel for the, you know, for the diplomats and for the the journalists, but everyone else in the hotel's already been staying there. So you do notice that a lot that people are milling around and they can't just sort of chuck out all of the guests. So I think that's going to be a first issue they're going to have to look at. Clearly he was staying in this hotel, he was booked in and he's appeared to talk. He had appeared already to mention that in some of his writing. But then there is the point that there's going to be a question about how he got close to the ballroom and just to sort of continue that point about the layout in the hotel. There's a sort of mezzanine level that you go in at. These metal detectors are and then you go downstairs to the ballroom where they open the ballroom doors at 7pm and then you're in the room. Now I think it's pretty clear what top Blanche, the Attorney General and other officials are saying is that that room was completely locked down because you had all of the heavily armed security Secret Service that we saw storm that room, protecting the room once the president and the VIPs were in there. So I think they're saying that actually the president was protected and the outer perimeter was just breached by this individual. But of course it's raising a huge number of questions about security.
- [11:15]
Justin Webb
What more do we know about the suspect and what if anything about his motive?
- [11:20]
Kai Wright
Well, we know he's a 31 year old man called Cole Thomas Allen. He lived just outside Los Angeles in California. He, according to his online profiles, he was a computer sciences graduate and a teacher. He had said he went to a pretty prestigious to Caltech, pretty prestigious competitive university there. Now what the police have said is that they believe he had traveled by train to first to Chicago and then on to Washington D.C. as you say, they've said he was heavily armed. He had a shotgun, handgun and knives. Now one of the things that has emerged as often does in these cases is a so called manifesto, online writings that have been discovered. Now these are being widely reported now by the US Media. Their existence has been already talked about by law enforcement officials and White House officials. And there is a very lengthy sort of diatribe against Donald Trump in this. He rants about him and basically says it was time for someone to do something about it. And that's why I decided to act. It talks about what he views as the legitimate targets in there, basically talks about senior members of government except for Kash Patel, the head of the FBI. For some rather strange reason he's sort of carved out as being a target. He goes on to say that members of the Secret Service will be targets if they get in the way, and so will anyone else basically, in the room if they chose to go and see Trump speak, and they happen to get in the way of this. So he clearly seems pretty determined, at least according to these online writings. And he also does talk about the security in the hotel and effectively says he managed to get there with weapons and nobody stopped him, and says that was pretty unbelievable.
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Justin Webb
And, Tom, with your own eyes, you were seeing it. Tell us about the moment that you became aware that it was happening.
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Kai Wright
So I was at a table. I mean, really, we were right in the middle of the room. The band had played, the national anthem had played. There'd been a very short sort of introduction from the head of the White House Correspondents Association. And then the president with the first lady, and Caroline Levitt, the press secretary of the White House, were watching some magic tricks being done by the entertainer there who'd been invited. And I think our viewers and listeners might have seen some of the pictures of this moment, because he's sort of pulling out a white piece of paper and you hear on the pool camera, gunshots. Now, where I was sitting, I didn't hear gunshots. I know the other colleagues towards the back of the room did hear the gunshots quite clearly. The first thing that made me aware something was going on was I'd been chatting to a colleague next to me, turned, and the back of the room, I mean, all hell broke loose. There was this huge crashing sound. What had basically happened was it was the armed Secret services in body armor, helmets and these rifles with scopes and torches, rushing into the room from the back to try and secure the stage. They were clambering over chairs that people were cowering under and getting towards the front of the room, climbing onto the stage. So this extraordinary moment got down under the table. I looked very clearly, could see by this stage, none of the VIPs were on it. President was gone. First Lady Caroline Levitt and the Vice president nowhere to be seen. And instead on stage were two very heavily armed Secret Service men pointing rifles into basically where we were sitting, the audience with these flashlights. And in some of the reporting I've seen, they're shouting to each other, do you track the target and do you track the threat? And one of them was saying, no. So they're clearly looking for somebody in case they got into the room.
- [15:09]
Justin Webb
Did you actually see what happened to Donald Trump? Cause there Are pictures of that from the back aren't there? But were you aware of him being there suddenly and then not?
- [15:18]
Kai Wright
I'd been having a conversation, I think, with the person next to me. So I hadn't been looking at the stage when it all kicks off behind me. So I turned, watched all this unfold. But that must have been 10 seconds and then we're getting down and as soon as I looked at the stage, it was empty. So that whole evacuation that we've seen the pictures of happened incredibly quickly. I mean, it must have been less than 20 seconds. I think they got everyone off the stage. So it was like they were there and then they weren't, as far as I was concerned. And as I say, suddenly just replaced with Secret Service agents.
- [15:51]
Sarah Smith
So we were saying earlier there will be questions asked about the security, that shots were fired in the vicinity of the President, but this man didn't get into the room itself. It doesn't appear from the reporting that there was any real danger to the president, any chance he would have been able to fire to. And the Secret Service did exactly what they ought to in evacuating him incredibly quickly. I mean, can this not be recast as a security success?
- [16:15]
Kai Wright
I mean, I think, you know, it's. Well, this is the thing. It's like there is one question around the security that was there in the hotel. But then I think, and certainly what Todd Blanche was, the Attorney General was trying to suggest and I think other officials now, is that wherever the President goes, I mean, there is basically, as we know, there is a sort of small army that travels with him, creates this bubble around him. And so as soon as those shots were fired upstairs and they got this guy down, clearly what the President's close protection were doing was securing the president. And they did that very successfully. Nothing got in that room. I think there's going to be, there will clearly be a whole raft of questions. But it felt like it felt from the fact that the venue itself felt a bit porous, basically. That is clearly not ideal.
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Justin Webb
And it's worth saying, isn't it? This was potentially going to be a really big deal speech that he was going to make because he hasn't been to one before, has he? Everyone will sort of vaguely remember that Obama teased him and that caused him to run for the presidency. I'm subbing this down a little bit, but that's what a lot of people seriously believe that it was the public humiliation by Obama at a previous White House correspondence do that decided Trump to go for Obama and to go for him as viciously as he did, et cetera, et cetera. And then there's this relationship with the press where there are plenty of people in the press aren't the Tom who really do regard Trump as a fascist actually regard him as someone who is trying to suppress freedom of speech. So this moment where he was going to come to them and make this speech in front of them, it was potentially a very big deal.
- [18:04]
Kai Wright
Yeah. I mean, the speech itself from the president, the fact he was attending was always going to be a huge news story in its own right because, you know, there has been this increasing standoff between the White House and the press. He didn't come to the White House Correspondents association dinner last year, and so neither did most senior members of the administration. And suddenly they were all here with the President. He decided to come. The theme of the dinner for the Correspondents association was the First Amendment, you know, celebrating free speech. That was meant to make a point about what, you know, as you have pointed to where those parts of the system are deemed to be encroaching on infringing journalistic independence under this White House. And so, you know, there was the potential for this, you know, this moment of this sort of clash to see what he was going to say at the speech and how he would deal with that. It was interesting that Caroline Levitt, the spokeswoman, had done this interview, I think, with Fox News, just sort of standing on the red carpet beforehand and was previewing pre empting a bit about his speech and saying, oh, it's gonna be feisty. And she said, shots will be fired. I mean, that clip has been going viral, as you can imagine, on social media, which clearly she meant as a metaphor for the speech. But it gave you a sense of the sort of buildup to this. And of course, none of this took
- [19:24]
Sarah Smith
place, so we should let you go to get on with the day job. But it was absolutely fascinating to hear from you in the room. And yes, and thank goodness you and everybody, El, are okay.
- [19:35]
Kai Wright
Thanks, guys. Great to chat.
- [19:37]
Justin Webb
Let us listen. Actually, Sarah, maybe before we go on and talk about anything else, let's listen to what Donald Trump has already said. So as well as doing that CBS sit down that you just told us about, he went back to the White House, didn't he? Initially wanted to spend some time there and then go back and make his speech, because as Tom was saying, he loves nothing better than to talk in front of people and potentially had some pretty feisty things to say, though I thought it was Interesting. Let's listen to a kind of montage of the things he said at this late night news conference that he held this impromptu news conference. I thought the tone was interesting for all sorts of other reasons as well. But let's have a listen.
- [20:17]
Donald Trump
This was an event dedicated to freedom of speech that was supposed to bring together members of both parties with members of the press. And in a certain way, it did, because the. The fact that they just unified. I saw a room that was just totally unified. It was in one way very beautiful. Melania was very cognizant, I think, of what happened. I think she knew immediately what happened. She was saying, that's a bad noise. And we were whisked away along with other people, but we were really whisked away. And again, the performance of. Of the Secret Service and the police, all of the law enforcement, I thought it was really good. So it was very quick. There wasn't a lot of time to be thinking because it was a matter of seconds before we were out the door and gone into an area. I will say, you know, it's not a particularly secure building. And I didn't want to say this, but this is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we're planning at the White House. It's actually a larger room, and it's much more secure. It's got. It's drone proof. It's bulletproof glass. We need the ballroom. That's why Secret Service, that's why the military are demanding it. They've wanted the ballroom for 150 years for lots of different reasons, but today is a little bit different, because today we need levels of security that. That probably nobody has ever seen before. We're going to reschedule. We're going to do it again. We're not going to let anybody take over our society. We're not going to cancel things out, because we can't do that. We wanted to stay tonight. I will tell you, I. I fought like hell to stay. You know, I tell the story. Race car drivers. I think it's very dangerous. So if you take 1% and then take about 10% of 1% just to break it down very easily, they die so much. Less than 1%, 10% of 1%. I think bull riding is very dangerous. If you take about the same 10% of 1%, much less than 1%, but if you take presidents, it's 5.8% and about 8% are shot at. So nobody told me this was such a dangerous profession. If Marco would have told me, maybe I wouldn't have run. Maybe I would have said, I'll take a pass. No, it's a dangerous profession, but I don't view it that way. Look, I'm here to do a job. It's part of the job. It is a dangerous. I can't imagine that there's any profession that's more dangerous.
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Sarah Smith
Well, and particularly for Donald Trump, who, of course, was actually injured when he was shot at during the 2024 campaign in Butler, Pennsylvania. And there was a threat in Florida as well, when an armed man managed to get onto his golf course where he was playing. So it's even more dangerous, it would seem, for Donald Trump than it has been for some previous presidents. But there's an awful lot in what he had to say there to unpack. Justin. I mean, first off, with him starting with a slightly different tone, wasn't he talking about a beautiful, unified evening? Even though we know that he had planned to make a speech in which he was going to be really, really critical of the press who were in the room, he was going to be attacking them very firmly.
- [23:44]
Donald Trump
I was all set to really rip it. And I said to my people, this would be the most inappropriate speech ever made if I said so I have to save it. I don't know if I could ever be as rough as I was going to be tonight. I think I'm going to be probably very nice. I'll be very boring the next time. But we're going to have a great event.
- [24:02]
Sarah Smith
And this is what happens with Donald Trump. And I think, perfectly understandably, when something like this has happened, you get about 48 hours of him saying, this could be a unifying moment. And he's not going to be attacking people. He's going to say nice things and compliment people instead. And it doesn't last for very long. Cause he said exactly the same things after Butler of Pennsylvania. And then he turned up at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and, you know, was giving it with both barrels to his critics by the time he'd finished.
- [24:28]
Justin Webb
Yes. Well, he was kind of. You really sensed when he gave that speech in Milwaukee that the initial part of the speech wasn't. It had kind of written for him and he'd been persuaded to play nice, as it were. And then as the speech went on and he went off script a bit, it was back to how he was though. It's worth saying, though, isn't it, Sarah? He started off after that initial attempt when he was actually grazed by saying, fight, fight, fight. And this time round, it's not fight, fight, fight. It's unity. And it's interesting to me. I just wonder whether, with the midterms coming up, with him being in a real difficulty politically, for all manner of reasons, obviously the Iran war right at the top of the list, whether, you know, he sits down with Susie Wiles and various other, if we could call them, adults in the room who say, look, you want to find a path forward that works for you. And I'm not suggesting he's suddenly going to become a kind of unifying figure. That would be ludicrous. But there are certain notes that he might want to hit. I suppose that that could be useful to him, just to put it like
- [25:39]
Sarah Smith
that, because he had pivoted pretty quickly in what he was saying in those clips that we heard there. And this was him talking about an hour after he'd been whisked out of the ballroom in the Hilton Hotel. And he's talking about his own ballroom again, which has been controversial. Many Americans will know the east wing of the White House was knocked down, which came as a surprise to a lot of people, so that he can build this really large ballroom, which many people think swamps the White House. It's out of scale with the rest of the building, and it seems to get bigger every time new drawings of it come out. So very controversial. And security is used all the time as a reason why he has to do this. They're putting a secure bunker underneath it. So he says that the Secret Service and the military are insisting he does this so that the President's better protected for a situation at the room and things underneath it. And of course, now he's able to say, look, he wouldn't have to go to the Hilton or any other hotel ballrooms if he had a ballroom of his own. That was very swiftly that he started using this to make a political argument for his own building.
- [26:39]
Justin Webb
Yeah. And talking of political arguments, the other political argument being made by people on the right, and I think with some degree of fairness, is that there is this thing, stochastic terrorism, this idea that you can create an atmosphere where people are the victims of terrorism and of assassinations without actually doing the terrorizing or the assassinating yourself. And it's something that people talked about in Trump, Trump's first term, isn't it? And suggested that he was doing it. He was creating the milieu in which violent things were done to people. And what people on the right are saying, well, hang on a second. Doesn't that work in reverse now? Isn't one of the Things that is going on is that too many people on the left are prepared to talk about violence. You think of Luigi Mangione, this guy who's accused of killing. He's the chief suspect, the only suspect actually, in the killing of an insurance executive in New York. The amount of support that he has, actual support. I mean, people saying he should be let out of jail. He did nothing wrong on the broader left, and this isn't necessarily the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, but it's this business of whether or not on the left, in American society, Sarah, it's become possible to think and to say things about Donald Trump and about his top people that increases the danger to them. That's the charge, isn't it?
- [28:04]
Sarah Smith
It, yeah. And it's hard to know whether it does genuinely increase the danger to them and motivate people to want to do that or whether both things are happening at once. Because Donald Trump is such a polarizing figure, people are using very extreme language about him when they talk about him. And some people seem to be motivated to try to kill him because as we were saying, this is the third serious attempt on his life in less than two years. One thing I thought was very affecting was Erica Kirk was at this event and was really visibly shaken by this. And she is the widow of Charlie Kirk, the right wing influencer who ran Turning Point USA bringing young people to the MAGA movement. And he, of course, was assassinated at a university event in Arizona, guess what? Just less than a year ago or so. And no wonder, you know, she was very, very shaken up by that she had seen on television, her husband being associated, assassinated by a gunman. But it does bring home to you, yes, that actually the threat in American life at the moment does seem to be against right wing figures rather than, as you more, maybe more traditionally think that it would, people on the right who have access to guns and who might try and assassinate political rivals. There is a very, very unfortunate trend of any political violence, but it does seem to be being directed at right wing figures right now.
- [29:20]
Justin Webb
And also, Sarah, just as a final thought, left wing, right wing, just put, putting all that to one side, just for America. This is a kind of paroxysm, isn't it, of political violence that appears not to be going away and to a lot of who just would love it to go away and would love to an extent go back to how things were before. Not that there weren't threats against Barack Obama and there were considerable ones, but just this kind of sense that actually when it came to it. The actual violence didn't happen.
- [29:58]
Sarah Smith
Well, yes, and I think, you know, we are living in a time of particular turmoil that is inspiring some people towards violence. And of course, we have discussed many times the access that there are to guns in America, the fact that it just does feel like a fundamentally violent society, that people are more motivated to take things into their own hands, to take some kind of action, whether it's against senior political figures or whether it's against people in their own neighborhoods. We've seen people being shot at, protests, all kinds of ways in which political violence plays out, but it's not brand new. I mean, I was reflecting on the fact. You'll know, Justin, because you lived in Washington for a long time as well. This particular Hilton hotel where the White House Correspondents Dinner is always held is one of many Hilton hotels in Washington. And so it's known colloquially as the Hinckley Hilton. That's what we always refer it to. And it is called that after John Hinckley, the gunman who shot Ronald Reagan as he was leaving that hotel in 1981. And Ronald Reagan was, he was just grazed as well. He wasn't badly injured, although he had to be taken to hospital after that. You know, people have been shooting at American presidents for quite a long time. That's what the point Donald Trump was making when he was saying it's more dangerous than being a racing car driver or bull riding. You're more likely to be killed as an American president because it has for a long time, unfortunately, a risk of one of the jobs all the way back to Abraham Lincoln, of course.
- [31:18]
Justin Webb
Yeah. And it's worth remembering as well, you're quite right, Sarah, because they even had a go at Gerald Ford, didn't he? The guy who was brought in to be the unifier in chief back in the mid-1970s after Nixon went and there were at least two serious attempts on his life. So you're dead right. It's always been a thing that's been part of the job. And Donald Trump is not. I'm not sure about the percentages that he came up with there, but he's certainly right that it is that threat goes with the job. Which I suppose brings us just finally, Sarah, to the point about the King's visit now, which I, I mean, given that most of it is behind the scenes anyway and in secure places, I wouldn't have thought there was much of a reason not to do it. What, what are we hearing at the moment about what is likely to happen and, and whether, I suppose Anything changes.
- [32:04]
Sarah Smith
Well, so Donald Trump was asked about this, speaking to Fox News, to Jackie Heinrich, he said that he, it, it is going to go ahead as president planned.
- [32:13]
Donald Trump
First of all, King Charles is coming and he's a great guy and we look forward to it. He's really a fantastic person and a tremendous representative. And he's brave, you know, he's fought something that's very tough to fight. He's got a problem with, as you know, that very well documented problem with his health. And he's been amazing, actually. He's very brave, actually. And he's a friend of mine for a long time. So he's coming and we're going to have a great time. And he represents his nation like nobody else can do it.
- [32:48]
Sarah Smith
In fact, interestingly, when I was in Washington last week talking to people about the arrangements for this and they said it's going to be more secure around the king than he will be used to because at public events, he and the queen are used to getting much closer to the public than any American president is ever allowed to by the Secret Service. So they're planning some events in New York, in Virginia, where he will be able to meet people much more closely than he will be when he is with President Trump, because a lot of that will happen inside the White House, inside the secure grounds there. And it's yet another opportunity for Donald Trump to complain that his ballroom isn't ready because they're having a much smaller state dinner than he would have liked to have otherwise, as they're all going to be crammed into the East Room. What they do generally at the White House, if you want to have a big state banquet, is put a marquee up. But President Trump is refusing to give the king dinner in a tent. So they're having a slimmed down state dinner in the East Room throughout which he will complain that it would be much, much better if he had his big, beautiful, secure ballroom.
- [33:50]
Justin Webb
I'm sure the king is looking forward to it all. With that, Sarah, we'd probably better go. Bye, bye.
- [33:54]
Sarah Smith
Bye.
- [33:57]
Justin Webb
Thank you for listening to another episode. It is you, the ameracaster, that makes americast, the community that it now is. If you like what you've heard, please do subscribe to this podcast on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts. We always want to hear your feedback as well. We look at every single bit of correspondence that we get so you can send us an email. AmericaSTBC.co.uk the WhatsApp is 443-301-239480 and you can get involved in the AmericaST Discord server. The link to that is in the description. Till next time. Bye Bye.
- [34:56]
Kai Wright
I'm Kai Wright.
- [34:57]
Sarah Smith
I'm Carter Sherman. Welcome to Stateside with Kai and Carter. We're a new show from the Guardian.
- [35:01]
Donald Trump
We're talking to big thinkers and the
- [35:03]
Justin Webb
best journalists just trying to understand the
- [35:05]
Kai Wright
world through smart conversation and honest reporting.
- [35:07]
Sarah Smith
We don't have billionaires telling us what to say.
- [35:09]
Kai Wright
Stateside with Kyan Carter will come out three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and
- [35:14]
Donald Trump
Friday, starting May 13.
- [35:15]
Sarah Smith
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