Transcript
Mike Baker (0:00)
Hey, Mike Baker here. Now, did you know that Fast Growing Trees is America's largest and most trusted online nursery? Did you know that they've got thousands of trees and plants and over 2 million happy customers? Come on, seriously, 2 million satisfied customers. They have all the plants your yard or home needs, including fruit trees and privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs, don't forget your shrubs and house plants. All grown with care and and guaranteed to arrive on your doorstep healthy. Whatever you're looking for, Fast Growing Trees helps you find options that actually work for your climate, for your space, for your lifestyle. Right now, they have great deals on spring planting essentials, up to half off on select plants. And listeners to The PDB get 20% off their first purchase when using the code PDB at checkout. That's an additional 20% off for better plants and better growing at fast growingtrees.com using the code PDB at checkout, that's fast growing trees.com code PDB. Now is the perfect time to plant and use code PDB to save. Today. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. Hey, Mike Baker here. Now, I wanted to share this interview that I did this week with my good friend Mike Slater on his terrific podcast. It's called Politics by Faith. Now we get into the shooting at the White House Correspondent's Dinner and what it says about the current threat environment, and we tackle a bigger question in today's world, with all the divisiveness and hateful rhetoric, can the Secret Service keep President Trump safe? Take a listen. And be sure to make a habit of listening to Politics by Faith with Mike Slater.
Mike Baker (1:49)
Foreign.
Mike Slater (1:55)
Welcome back to Politics by Faith, the Age of Assassination. Let's get more detail and insight on what happened in this most recent assassination attempt in Washington, D.C. with the great Mike Baker, host of one of the top podcasts in the entire world, the President's Daily Brief. Mr. Baker, how are you, sir?
Mike Baker (2:12)
I'm doing good, Mike. Thanks very much, man.
Mike Slater (2:15)
Good to talk to you. Thanks for being here. So you operate in the private security realm now after your CIA days. What, based off your insight and experience, did you see that was odd with the security at the D.C. hilton?
Mike Baker (2:28)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have a security services group inside the company that I've got. And here's the problem. You're talking about the Washington Hilton. For people who don't live in Washington, aren't familiar with it, it is the largest hotel, the largest event hotel in D.C. for people who have been in D.C. a long time, it's, it's morbidly known as sort of the Hinkley Hotel, because that's where John Hinkley attempted to assassinate Reagan. And the problem is because of its size, right, It. It creates a variety of issues for security. You've got a. Multiple. Multiple entrances. You've got a thousand guest rooms. So by definition, and it's always busy. You've got a lot of people milling about. Right. And the Secret Service, Metropolitan Police in particular, they. They have to work with that, right? You have to. That's where they're going to hold the event. They've held the event there forever because that's about the only place you could put that many people. So the things that stuck out for me were not a surprise necessarily, that they had some issues with the sort of this, what they call the layered security approach, but it's the other things they should be doing. What you typically do is, if you're hosting a major event where you've got real security concerns at a hotel, then you run due diligence on all the guests, those that have just checked in, those that have checked in in the past couple of days, you want to. You want to try to get a sense of who's in that environment. And so you do some thorough due diligence so that I don't know that that was done. And I don't know whether it's fair to draw a connection to that. And the fact that it looks like a family member of the gunman did submit a report to police, their local police, saying they were concerned about the state of mind and some of the things that this individual had said leading up to this event, I don't know whether that's fair or not. That's partly speculation on my part until the investigation is finished. So that's one issue that I think really does stand out for me also. The number of dignitaries or senior administration officials was a real surprise. It was like they were emptying out the clown car. Every cabinet secretary, I mean, a lot of cabinet secretaries, the vice president, obviously the president, he's the guest of honor at these correspondent dinners. That's a lot of people to put in an environment like this where, you know, you're dealing with a very dysfunctional political environment. So I was surprised at the fact that they loaded it up with that many senior administration officials.
