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Trump Injured In Shooting At Rally, Suspected Shooter Killed; Witness: Gunman Moving "From Roof To Roof" Before Shooting; FBI Identifies Trump Rally Shooter As Thomas Matthew Crooks. Aired 7-8a ET

Aired July 14, 2024 - 07:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:01:34]

KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Donald Trump injured, but safe. The 2024 election fundamentally altered. America reeling from a horrific act of violence.

Good morning. I'm Kasie Hunt. You are watching CNN's special coverage, a special edition of CNN This Morning of the attempted assassination of the former president, Donald Trump. This is the scene that unfolded last night. It's a scene that all of us are likely to realize is one where we will remember where we were, as we learned, that it had unfolded. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, CURRENT PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: No, that's a little bit old, that chart. That chart's a couple of months old. And if you want to really see something that's said, take a look at what happened --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get down, get down, get down, get down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Move down to the spare, move down to the spare.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Move to the spare. Hold, hold. When you're ready, on you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ready.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Move.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Move.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That guy's here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That guy's here. Move to the spare.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You ready?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shooter's down. Shooter's down.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shooter down, shooter down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Very good.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shooter's down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shooter's down. OK, good to move.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're clear.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're clear, we're clear.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's move.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're clear.

D. TRUMP: Let me get my shoes on. Let me get my shoes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got you, sir. I got you, sir.

D. TRUMP: Let me get my shoes on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hold on. Your head is blooding.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sir, we got to move too close.

D. TRUMP: Let me get my shoes on.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Watch out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALL: USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: The former president, Donald Trump there, telling his security detail to wait so that he can raise his fist in the air and yell, fight, fight, fight. The former president, the presumptive Republican nominee, shot through the ear by an assassin's bullet. He is OK. His life was spared by mere inches.

New York Times photographer Doug Mills captured this image. It shows what appears to be a vapor trail following the bullet, one of the bullets, as it flew past Trump's head as he stood on the stage. One person in attendance was killed, and two others remain in critical condition.

The Secret Service says the suspected shooter was killed by responding officers, and we believe that this footage shows the would-be assassin's body on a rooftop just outside the rally. A witness telling CNN affiliate KDRK that they believe they saw him moving from roof to roof moments before the shooting. Following his injury, the former president was swarmed by Secret Service agents who placed themselves around him to prevent further injury.

[07:05:00]

And as we just saw moments later, this wounded, but defiant Trump, this now iconic image of him standing with the flag, his fist in the air, there it is, from Evan Vucci of the Associated Press. You can see the blood, of course, streaming from his ear down his face. He would later say he heard the bullet whizzing by his ear as it was hit.

This historic moment was captured on tape, and this picture is going to live in American history. And it could, if not already, has become the defining image of this election. Senate Republican candidate Dave McCormick was at the scene, and he told CNN the former president had just invited him up to the stage when he heard a pop, pop, pop of the gunshots.

CNN's Alayna Treene was there at the rally. She joins us live now from Butler County, Pennsylvania. Alayna, again for those who are waking up at home trying to digest this, quite frankly, horrific news of what happened last night at the rally, take us back to the scene, what you saw, what it was like to be there. Especially that moment where it turned from what was clearly a terrifying set of events to one where President Trump was putting his fist in the air, defiant.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Right. Well, Kasie, I mean, clearly no one going into yesterday was expecting what happened to unfold about a little after six just shortly after Donald Trump had taken this stage. That is when we had heard. I mean, I was standing on the risers reporting on his speech on what was happening. I could hear from the right side of the stage right of Donald Trump's shoulder.

That was where the shots where the shots were coming from. Of course, in the moment, it was unclear what it was. We later learned that it was these shots and bullets being shot toward the venue. Now Donald Trump immediately dropped to the ground. You could hear chaos in the crowd. People were screaming.

You could hear Secret Service telling everyone to get down. It was absolute pandemonium in there. And then afterward, I would say people were really angry. Everyone was -- I saw who I saw in the crowd immediately after we're shocked at what had happened, some people had turned to their anger on the press I think seeking an outlet for what had happened.

And I did have an opportunity to talk with many of the attendees immediately following the event after we were all escorted out of the premises. I spoke with one man. His name is Joseph Meyn. He actually was sitting behind the stage in the bleachers and was next to where one man was fatally killed. I want you to take a listen to what he told me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JOSEPH MEYN, RALLY ATTENDEE: You know, I knew it was gunfire, but I couldn't quite tell where it was coming from. It's not like it was coming from behind the bleachers. And a man in the bleachers kind of to the right of me in the bleachers, took a gunshot wound to the head was killed. And another woman -- I don't know exactly where she was on bleach, I think she was either behind me or to the right of me, she got around in the -- she got hit in the forearm and hand it looked like.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: Now, Kasie, he also had told me that the man who was shot and killed, his entire family was there and had witnessed what had happened. He also said that he helped carry the body off of the bleachers. So, a very emotional evening, a very harrowing scene.

I also spoke to another couple who were -- in one the front rows at this rally, very close to the stage where Donald Trump was. They told me that they had heard him screaming, asking for his shoes as Secret Service was trying to escort him out that they were very relieved to see him get up and put his fist in the air and scream fight.

And so very mixed emotions out of what had happened last night, but all very shocked by what had happened clearly. Kasie?

HUNT: Alayna Treene for us. Alayna, very grateful that you are safe this morning, that the former president is safe, of course, and we should also note there was one person at the rally who was killed. They still have not identified who that is, but our thoughts, prayers go out to his or her family at this hour.

So, of course, now the FBI trying to piece together how all of this unfolded. One eyewitness told CNN affiliate KDKA they saw the gunman jumping from roof to roof before the shooting. Another witness spoke to the BBC in the moments following the shooting about how they saw the shooter before the shots rang out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We noticed a guy crawling, arm, you know, bear crawling up the roof of the building beside us. Fifty feet away from us. So we're standing there, you know, we're pointing at the guy crawling up the roof.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And he had a gun, right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He had a rifle.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A rifle.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We could clearly see him with a rifle. Absolutely. We're pointing at him.

[07:10:02]

The police are down there running around on the ground. We're like, hey man, there's a guy on the roof with a rifle. And the police were like, huh? What? You know, like, they didn't know what was going on. You know, we're like, hey, right here on the roof. We can see him from right here.

We see him. You know, he's crawling. And next thing you know, I'm like -- I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, why is Trump still speaking? Why have they not pulled him off the stage? I'm standing there pointing at him for, you know, two, three minutes. Secret Service is looking at us from the top of the barn. I'm pointing at that roof, just standing there like this. And next thing you know, five shots ring out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Wow, unbelievable.

All right, our panel is back. Karen Finney is the former communications director for Hillary Clinton. Elliot Williams, former federal prosecutor. We have Republican strategist Doug Heye, CNN Political Commentator Alyssa Farah Griffin, former Secret Service Agent Jonathan Wackrow, and the former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Very grateful to all of you for joining us in the historic aftermath of this horrible event.

Andy McCabe, I'd like to start with you to just respond to what we heard from that interview that the BBC had where there was a person who saw -- apparently saw the shooter and tried to say and do something about this. I mean, what did you hear there? And what does it say to you about what got missed?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, I mean, first of all, this is the witness that you want, right? If you're an investigator -- there will be hundreds of rally attendees that will be interviewed. What you're looking for in those hundreds of interviews is a person like this who had direct eyewitness account of the moments leading up to the attack.

So it's amazing -- it's a great interview and I'm sure that guy has probably been identified and talked to by law enforcement already. So what -- one of the things that the FBI is going to be looking at is how did this person gain access to the building? We all know there's huge questions about why the Secret Service may have left that building unattended.

But this person gives us additional perspective. We know from what he said that there were police in the area. He described them as police, which would be consistent with the way the service protects a large area like this. They keep the closest place around the protectee. That inner circle is covered exclusively by secret service officers.

And then as you go further and further out from the protectee, that's where you have the partners stepping in to assist in securing the premises. And typically local police officers are on the outermost perimeter for a variety of reasons. There's more of them and they know the community better. And there -- that's what they're there for, to kind of spot things like this. This witness can also help you identify the actual police officers that were in the area. So you, you know, these are additional interviews that you'll be able to conduct to find out exactly where people were, what they were looking at, what they saw or didn't see. And all of those facts are going to go together to form this kind of, you know, patchwork of information that gives us the big picture exactly how this guy got to that roof at that moment.

And that's a big, you know, a big thing that the FBI wants to know to understand how the attack happened, but it's also going to shed a lot of light on whatever investigation the Secret Service does. And of course, now we know the congressional investigation as well. And these moments help expose for us weaknesses or vulnerabilities in the security plan.

HUNT: Jonathan Wackrow, let me follow up with you about the role of the Secret Service here. I think we want to be very careful to note and have been throughout the morning that there were heroes there that stepped in, potentially put their lives on the line for the former president.

Obviously, there was a -- you could see that we have pictures of the sharp shooting team that was responsible for ultimately making sure that this man wasn't able to fire more shots. And of course, the shooter is now dead, but this does indicate a massive failure by the Secret Service, by the people that were supposed to protect the former president from an incident like this. What do you think happened and why?

JONATHAN WACKROW, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, good morning. Listen, I think that, you know, Andy was spot on in the way that he described are the Secret Service, their protective methodology. It's basically concentric rings of protection that radiate out from, in this case, the former president with the closest, you know, in a ring comprised predominantly of special agents, and then the outer rings are a mixture of agents and local officers.

Now, when I take a look at this situation, you know, what we're talking about is, is a threat that presented itself beyond the physical security of the actual site, but it was still within, you know, an area of vulnerability.

[07:15:05]

And there's a couple key tells here that the Secret Service, through their advanced process knew that those rooftops or that direction was a vulnerability in the fact that the counter sniper team was prepositioned in looking in that direction.

You know, the -- what happened, the lapse of security, you know, how someone got up onto that roof needs to be reviewed. There needs to be some sort of mission assurance review to look at who was responsible for that area. I think it may come down to a communications error.

You know, we're hearing from eyewitnesses that they were calling out this threat. They were trying to notify law enforcement, but that is local law enforcement. Did that local law enforcement have the ability to communicate back to the Secret Service and other entities that are, you know, controlling the main site to, you know, to identify that threat quicker. So it never materialized to actually shooting.

So there's a lot of questions to be answered right here, in this mission assurance review. However, to your point, Kasie, what we did see was the finest moment of the Secret Service when that, you know, threat did present itself. When the shots were fired, they immediately reacted on stage. They covered and evacuated the president as they've trained for 1,000 times. The counter sniper team quickly identified and neutralized that threat. So there was not more loss of life.

HUNT: Makes sense for sure. Alyssa Farah Griffin, let me bring you in to this conversation here, because of course this happened on the eve of the Republican National Convention. And I think we also need to note that this is taking place in the context of a heightened, divided political climate and one that has seen -- we've already seen political violence in this election cycle in the form of what happened on January 6th which I know has affected you and your career, and the way kind of you think about politics as well.

And I'd just be interested in, you know, your reflections on how we got here and how we as a nation try to make a turn away from this and back to where we as a country should be, which is solving our differences and working them out with our words and not the way that we saw -- any sort of action like what we saw yesterday.

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, thank you, Kasie. And I just want to say my heart goes out to President Trump, former President Trump, his family. Thank God for Secret Service. Thank God that this was a close call. I'm just -- I'm struck today by where we are in this political moment, the parallels to 1968.

The fact that we live in an era of heightened political rhetoric. And I think it comes down to all of us with platforms and with voices in the media to our political leaders. We need to take the tone and tenor of our rhetoric down. I am a critic of the former president, a man, I once greatly esteemed and deeply care about and I still try to pray for every night.

You can critique policy. You can critique our politician's character. But there's legitimate political rhetoric, and then there is rhetoric that is meant to incite, and we see it too much. Then add to this, we're living in the era of information warfare. On your device every day, we are all targeted with information meant to make us hate our fellow American. Meant to tear us apart from within to divide this country.

And our adversary's fingerprints are all over it. This past week alone, if you spent any time on X, you would have seen rampant disinformation about Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, stuff that a simple Google search could show you was not true. No credible news outlet had shared it, but there it was getting retweeted by resistance Twitter millions and millions of times.

Already today, you see wrong information about the known shooter. We have to be careful in what we're sharing, what we're spreading, and how we're engaging in this political space. Policy is OK to critique. Critiquing politicians is as American as apple pie, but violent or escalatory rhetoric, it needs to stop for the sake of our country.

HUNT: Alyssa, absolutely. Let me go to Doug Heye as well. Doug, you -- similar to Alyssa, have been a critic of some of the ways our politics has played out of, of the former President Donald Trump. But on this eve of the convention, as we are looking at these images and trying to take this all in, what are your reflections?

DOUG HEYE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: So I immediately thought yesterday of a Saturday morning in January of 2011. I was in my car and I'm not a stoplight, and my phone starts ringing. And I didn't want to deal with it as you don't typically don't want to deal with phone calls when you're driving.

[07:20:00]

And I was called by a colleague, you got to come to the office at 9:30 on a Saturday. Why? Because Gabby Giffords was shot.

HUNT: Yes.

HEYE: And me and colleagues in various House leadership, Senate leadership and campaign committee offices got on a conference call. And the first thing we talked about was the rhetoric that we use and the fear of the rhetoric that our colleagues and members of Congress use. You know, 200 people that you sort of can't control.

And the problem -- and Alyssa alludes to this -- the problem is all of our rhetoric is weaponized. And what we -- we hear this phrase very often is, is both siderism (ph). No, my rhetoric's not the problem. Your rhetoric is the problem. When we say it with anger. Everyone's rhetoric needs to calm down and tone down.

And if we look at the days after Gabby Giffords was shot -- and Bryan Lanza brought this up earlier. Sarah Palin was sort of accused of with her rhetoric and using terms like bullseye and target. You can't say that. That's fair. But we all use that rhetoric. And we don't just use those terms that we use in sports and football games and baseball games and so forth. But we use it to attack people. We use it with hate. We use it with anger.

And to Alyssa's point, yes, we can disagree over policy. Of course we can. The problem is, and this has ramped itself up in the last six, seven years. Trump and his campaign have done that. Trump's opponents have done that. Is whatever we say isn't just a disagreement on policy. It's that you're not wrong on something, you're lying, you're evil.

Well, sometimes you're lying. Sometimes you may be evil. But everybody is lying. Everyone is evil. And therefore, these things, and January 6th, and the shooting on Steve Scalise, isn't accidental, it's inevitable. And my fear is, and thank God, President Trump is OK today --

HUNT: Thank God.

HEYE: -- is that this is going to happen again. And we are at a place in America where we not only don't learn lessons, we don't want to learn lessons. Because it's not my lesson to learn, it's your lesson to learn, and it's your lesson to learn. And until we can get past that, and Lord knows I don't know how we can, none of this gets solved.

HUNT: Well, that's the hard part.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, absolutely. And I think it's -- you know, and I think the miss and disinformation point extends to -- even what conversations about law enforcement now and who's responsible, who ought to be responsible. Congress is about to do hearings on all of this, and they ought to focus on the Secret Service, which has the responsibility of securing and caring for the president.

All this nonsense, to some extent, about weaponized law enforcement and the FBI, there's a place for that if people want to have that conversation, but that's -- that cannot be the nature of the conversation that happens now. And I feel like that's what's coming given that it is a very easy political point.

And just to clarify, this is Andrew McCabe and Jonathan Wackrow were talking about this a little bit. The Secret Service is responsible for the president's safety, but also candidate safety. Former President Trump is a candidate for office, gets Secret Service protection. The FBI will be responsible for any terrorism or counterterrorism investigation that happens here. Those are two very different functions under government.

But in this rush to point fingers, I think it'll be really easy to pile on one agency or another. And I just think it's important for everybody to have a clear head about --

HEYE: On the morning of January 6th.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

HEYE: Let's remember, that was the height of COVID --

WILLIAMS: Yes.

HEYE: -- right? You couldn't go out to dinner, you couldn't go to a movie and so forth. And so every day in that period, I would go for a walk in the afternoon. My lunchtime walk to get my steps in and all that kind of silly stuff. I made a real point to do it in the first thing in the morning, because I was sort of nervous of what might happen in the afternoon as the count was going on.

In my mind, I was looking at it like I don't want to deal with people with bullhorns, you know, protesting like when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. Everything was fine when that happened. But I knew that there was more anger and palpable anger. What ended up happening again was inevitable because everyone isn't just wrong. They're evil. They're lying and their motivations are questioned.

And my fear is moving into Milwaukee and the convention is this should be a redemptive and a teachable moment for everybody. But that's only true if you want to be redeemed. That's only true if you want to learn. And so, if your fist is in the air, Republican or Democrat, if fighting is what you want to do, then how do you manifest itself over the next week, specific to Milwaukee, and the next four months, specific to this campaign?

And that is for all of us. Myself, Karen, everybody in politics.

HUNT: All of us, all of us, yes.

HEYE: And again, I think the problem is, I don't need to learn a lesson, you need to learn a lesson. And if that is the mentality, left, right, center, whatever it is, this is going to happen again.

KAREN FINNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, look, as I've been saying, I mean, this is a moment -- this is an American moment. This is not a partisan moment. It is a moment where any of us who have any kind of platform have a responsibility to history. And how we talk about this moment will be part of how it is remembered and how people feel about it.

Is this a redemptive moment? I mean, there was that moment early on in COVID where we all just had to take a beat because we were in our homes.

[07:25:09]

And it made people kind of take a step back, which I thought was such an important moment. And we've now ramped ourselves back up. And so, again, I just can't under -- we just can't under play how important this moment is in history, how important this moment is, yes, that we learned, that the Secret Service learned, that the security -- I mean, that's what has -- what happens after, you know, after what happened to President Kennedy, what happened to President Reagan. You know, they go back and they try to reassess what can we do differently, we need to do the same.

WILLIAMS: It's also a great time to remind the world to put away the social media and not that social media does not have a powerful impact on all of our lives. But the simple fact is a lot of the information that came out immediately after and is still continuing to be spread on all sides it is not accurate.

And I think -- and even, you know, the leadership of X was tweeting or X-ing, as it were, that, you know, well, look at us, we're getting all this information out there. Well, it's not verified information.

HUNT: Right.

WILLIAMS: And there's a reason why news organizations are slower to put some of that out, because a lot of it ends up being inaccurate. And I think we have this -- it's almost this glorification of the ability to get all this information out there that's simply not verified in a time when the public needs calm and answers, not being the first person to get the sick bird out.

HEYE: It's not just information. Look, Trump supporters right now, certainly the people who are at the rally, people who are watching it, they're angry right now, and they have every right to be angry. And people in America, regardless of what you -- where you fall in politics, have a right to be angry with where the country is and where we're moving. Of course.

When I first heard of the shooting, I immediately went on X. And it wasn't the disinformation that I saw. It was the hate.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

HEYE: And it was Democrats who were using memes that, unfortunately, this was unsuccessful. That is hate.

WILLIAMS: Without question.

HEYE: And if this had happened to Joe Biden, I have no doubt, that people that I know probably would be making jokes.

WILLIAMS: Then --

HEYE: That is hate.

WILLIAMS: Yes, and without question, right? And then on top of that, it's also the, was this an inside job? And this is the rhetoric of Democrats.

HEYE: Yes.

HUNT: Yes, we don't want to get into that.

WILLIAMS: No, no, no, I know, that's what I'm saying.

HUNT: Yes, right.

WILLIAMS: It's all a slurry of non-checked, unverified --

HEYE: Yes.

WILLIAMS: -- information where people are trying to get the crazy information out there. And it's working. People are seeing it, they're sharing it, and it's making us all worse.

HUNT: Well, and Alyssa Farrah Griffin, I mean, the bottom line of this conversation, this reality that Doug and Elliot are so capably highlighting is that there is a real risk for us as a country that we embrace our worst tendencies, the worst of the way our politics has been over the course of the last eight years, instead of taking this and trying to look and find the best of us.

FARAH GRIFFIN: Exactly. This should be a sobering moment. I think it was important that President Biden went in front of the camera last night and gave remarks. I'm going to be curious to hear what the former President Trump's first remarks about this are. I can imagine this is a jarring experience for him.

It actually reminded me, Kasie, I was in the West Wing with the former president when we briefly thought we had an active duty -- an active shooter on campus. This would have been the summer of 2020. You all will remember President Trump was moved from the press briefing room. Turned out it was off campus.

And he had sort of that same poise that we saw last night, where he actually reacted quite quickly under these circumstances. And I would hope that for him and for those around him, it's a moment to realize the whole world is watching him, his supporters are in the tone of his rhetoric around this matters. We're going into the convention.

There's going to be really high emotions. There's going to be really strong feelings. People have a right to be angry. I am angry that somebody tried to assassinate the former president. But how do we convey that? It's our words matter. Looking forward and bringing the country together matters.

And I'm just really praying that this could somehow be a unifying moment, which feels distant in our current politics, but I'll be looking at both of the candidates to see how they use this and how they try to bring the country together.

HUNT: Andy McCabe, how can you help us understand what we hear from our leaders in this moment affects what actually happens in the real world, whether or not there are going to be copycat attempts or other things that come from this?

MCCABE: Well, Kasie, I think we've actually seen that in the last couple of years. There's been a fairly consistent messaging from the director of the FBI, from the secretary of Homeland Security and from their kind of counterterrorist experts that the kind of political discourse in this country was fueling greater concern about domestic terrorist threats. And we're seeing more and more groups arise. We're seeing more activity among those groups. The numbers bear it out. The number of domestic terrorism investigations in the FBI is elevated considerably over the last few years. The number of threats targeting political leaders and political leadership and political figures is off the charts.

The Capitol -- U.S. Capitol Police is like overwhelmed with threat traffic and threats that they have to respond to, to cover the protection of members of Congress. So, the temperature has been rising, you know -- we, you know, often we use that metaphor of like, you know, the frog and the kettle of water as it boils. We -- if we're not thinking about this all the time, we're not perceiving this elevation of threat within the country. But it has been happening all around us for the last several years.

I mean, you know, hopefully, this is a moment in which specifically political leaders think about the things they say and the way they interact with their supporters. There is no question that as that rhetoric becomes coarser, more confrontational, more kind of militaristic allusions to violence and like vanquishing your enemies and all that kind of nonsense, that's the sort of speech that really appeals to extremists. And those are the folks that law enforcement and intelligence are worried about.

It's not the average, you know, person who has a strong political belief and goes to rallies and things like that. You're worried about what the most extreme elements of the political spectrum, how they hear those -- that language and how they respond to it. There -- you know, they oftentimes in their manifestos or comments they make after attempted attacks, they reference things that they believe that that language -- that those leaders are speaking to them.

You've heard a number of January 6th defendants have said exactly that. They explained the fact that they were on the Capitol and they participated in the violence because they thought that the former president had told them to go there.

So, what people say, and particularly political leaders, what they say and how they say it has an enormous impact on the most concerning and vulnerable part of the political population, and those are people who are so extreme in their views that they might resort to violence.

HUNT: It's really such important context. Andy, I'm so grateful that you are kind of able to articulate that so clearly from the law enforcement perspective that you sit in as opposed to the political or even the historical one. Thank you very much for that.

And I have to say, the frog in boiling water and kind of the place where we find ourselves, I mean, I have been struck just in the course of my career as I started out, the first presidential campaign I covered from beginning to end was Mitt Romney's, and the lessons that I learned in terms of dealing with the potential for violence, they were history lessons. They were reporters telling me about covering Ted Kennedy in 1980 and being worried about that family's history.

And then, of course, what happened with Ronald Reagan in 1981. And I of course had grown up with my family, my mother and others talking about the John F. Kennedy assassination. And I have to say that when I first started out here in Washington, these were memories, this was history. Now, it is real. It is with us. We are back in this place.

And I just want to -- we'll be back in just a minute. But I do want to leave you here with a look back at one of the times when our nation collectively had to experience something like this. The outcome was much worse with John F. Kennedy than thank God it was yesterday night with the former president, Donald Trump. But let's just remember a little bit about what that felt like.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Kennedy has been assassinated. It's official now, the president is dead. One of them here in shock, some have fainted -- men, Secret Service men standing by the emergency room tears trickling down their face.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:35:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE H. W. BUSH, THEN-U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: We've had full and complete communications throughout the day. And the officers of the federal government have been fulfilling their obligations with skill and with care. I know I speak on behalf of the president and his family when I say that we are very grateful to all, so many people from across this country who've expressed their concern at this act of violence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: That was the last time that this nation had to grapple with an attempted assassination of a president of the United States. It has been 43 years since then-Vice President George H. W. Bush spoke to the nation to reassure them that President Ronald Reagan, although gravely injured by an assassin's bullet, was alive.

[07:40:00]

This morning, the nation once again trying to make sense of a senseless act of violence. And this time it was President Biden in front of the cameras, reassuring the nation and condemning what happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: There's no place in America for this kind of violence. It's sick. It's sick. It's one of the reasons why we have to unite this country. We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this.

The Trump rally was a rally that he should have been able to be conducted peacefully without any problem. But the idea, the idea that there's political violence or violence in America like this is just unheard of. It's just not appropriate. Everybody, everybody must condemn it. Everybody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Everybody must condemn it. Salena Zito was right there as Secret Service agents scrambled to protect Former President Trump and secure the scene at the rally. She is a reporter and she joins us now from Western Pennsylvania. Our panel is also back with us, Andy McCabe, Alyssa Farah Griffin, and Karen Finney.

Salena, it's wonderful to see you again. I'm sorry it's under these circumstances. You and I have known each other for many, many years on and off covering campaigns, and you are a daughter of Western Pennsylvania, and you were at this rally, as I understand it with your daughter, and you have also covered the evolution of our politics, the way things have changed, the increasing polarization, the negativity, the rhetoric that we have all been living with. But you were very close to the stage. Can you take us there? What did you see? What did you experience? And what are your reflections as someone who has a very unique perspective on this?

SALENA ZITO, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, WASHINGTON EXAMINER: So, I had talked to the president -- I got to the event early, as we always have to do as journalists. And people -- it was a very packed crowd, very happy crowd.

I was set to interview the president after the rally. I was going to go with him to Bedminster and do the interview. I saw the president four, five minutes before he went on the stage. I was -- went back to the holding room, just talked to him for just a couple minutes. He just was very happy, excited to be in Pennsylvania. And, you know, we just talked about, let's -- we're going to do this interview on the -- on -- when it was over.

I went into the bumper area, and for those of you who don't know what the bumper area, it's sort of like this causeway that goes between the president and the audience. There were bleachers, too, on three sides of him, and then in front of him was this massive crowd.

And so, I had been to his right, and they had moved us over to the left. It's a very fluid environment. And I was on the president's left-hand side, maybe three, four feet from him at the most, and just heard the pops, pop, pop, pop, just going right past me.

And I was with my daughter. My daughter is a photojournalist. She was with me. She was going to be chronicling our interview. And I saw the president go like this, just -- I was standing right there, or -- yes, standing right there, and go like this. And then, you immediately saw him just completely surrounded by law enforcement. And he -- they -- everyone is shouting, get down, get down.

So, he gets down. They're around him. They're acting as a human field. And I can hear him say, I need to get my shoes, something about his shoes. And he stands up on his own and just watching this -- it's almost slow motion in my head, he puts his fist up. He's saying fight, fight, fight. And then they take him off the stage. He walks in front of me. And someone's hat -- I saw thought it was his hat, fell right in front of me.

And to their great credit, his advance team, they had laid on top of me until it was all clear. And my daughter. And that's what happened. It felt like I laid there for 20 minutes, it was probably five minutes. They took all of us that were in the bumper back to a secured area. And we really didn't see the evacuation of everyone.

[07:45:00]

But when I walked out, and it had to be an hour after the shooting. You have to understand we have no news information in that play -- in that moment because all of the cellular is down. And when you walked out, it was an incredible scene because the last thing you saw were all of these people so excited to see the president who had stood there for hours, 90-degree weather, just in every sort of patriotic outfit that you can imagine as you see at rallies all the time.

And there's these images of there -- someone had left their wheelchair there and there were purses and you could just see that that that people had just left. And it just -- it was just a sad reminder of what had been a very happy sort of celebratory event. And it was a very different story.

HUNT: A very different story indeed. What a remarkable perspective that you have on this. Salena, can I ask you, since you were so close, are you able to shed any light on some of the things that we can see in the video and here before they cut the malts, but that isn't possible to see? Like, for example, the president asks about shoes. Are there any other details or things you saw? What happened there?

ZITO: So, they had surrounded him and he knelt down, sort of that posture that you take when they tell you to get down to make -- and you can see -- I can see the law enforcement looking around to make sure it was clear there was nothing more coming.

I had heard three shots in me -- those -- I heard those three pops, and then there was a pause. And then, there were three -- I think it was three more shots after that, but the caliber of the gun was very different than the first shots. So, I guessed in that moment that that was, you know, a response to what happened.

And you know, the president was almost defiant in wanting to get up and get up on his own and to want to -- you know, I've covered the president for eight years, nine years, I've interviewed him 10 times, you know, that moment when he puts his fist up, when you're -- whatever way you feel about the president, that was very him. He wanted to project to people that he was OK.

I think elected officials and in particular presidents, right, they always -- because America is thought of as this pillar of strength, they always want to project that to make people feel safe, no matter who is the president. They always want to project that because I think that they have -- they feel, and knowing Trump in the way that I do, they have this sense of it is what people need and the need to see it's OK. And I would argue that that was what he was doing in that moment.

HUNT: Very interesting. Salena, we also heard him say fight, fight several times.

ZITO: Yes.

HUNT: Could you hear him say that?

ZITO: Yes.

HUNT: And also, I mean, how do you look at and what do you view as the responsibility of our leaders in a moment like this as we grapple with something that, let's be clear, should not? It has happened in our past, but it should not happen?

ZITO: Yes. So, I'm old enough to remember when President Kennedy was shot. And obviously, of course -- and in my childhood, you know, Bobby Kennedy was shot, Martin Luther King was shot, you know, this was this -- as a child, I almost thought this is what happened to leaders, right? It was -- because in the way a child views the world.

And I think that President Trump was really trying to let people know I'm OK. And I think in any moment, as I said before, I think that is an instinct that a leader has. No matter who it is, no matter what party it is, they understand that the vulnerability people feel when they don't believe that their leader is safe. There is a vulnerability -- they understand that they're -- they are reflecting the country.

[07:50:00]

So, there -- I remember very clearly President Reagan going outside the hospital window, right, for those of us old enough to remember that, and waving and sort of showing this strength. I think that's an intuitive part of being a president. You want to let people know it's OK. We-- in that moment, they're letting you know we'll be OK.

HUNT: All right. Salena Zito for us. Very grateful to have your perspective. Very glad you and your daughter are OK. And of course, the president as well.

ZITO: Thank you.

HUNT: We are also hearing from the president himself this morning. He has posted in just a few minutes, the last few minutes, thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers yesterday as it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening. And he says, we will fear not. There's more there on Truth Social as well.

We're going to continue to talk about it here on CNN as we cover that, likely now the iconic image of this presidential campaign and one for the history books. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUNT: Welcome back. The attempted assassination of Former President Donald Trump is unfortunately not an entirely unique moment in American politics. We have grappled with political violence in this country before. We have also grappled with the kind of heightened rhetoric that we are dealing with now in this day and age. We have dealt with it before.

[07:55:00]

So, let's talk about how history can teach us about navigating this current climate. Joining us now, CNN presidential historian Tim Naftali. Tim, good morning to you. This is unfortunately not new, but it has been a long time since we have grappled with something like this. As you watch these images unfold and as we see a bloodied Former President Trump, what do you see and what do we as -- what should we as Americans be taking from this?

TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN, FORMER DIRECTOR, NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND SENIOR RESEARCH SCHOLAR, COLUMBIA'S SIPA: Well, what I see is a reminder of how our politics can be violent. And I also see an inflection point and a very important point for all influencers, all leaders, not necessarily just national leaders, local leaders and others, this is an opportunity to dial back the rhetoric and remind people that there are unsettled individuals, there are disturbed individuals, there are people who can be pushed to do the awful and the unspeakable. When our politics are described as apocalyptic. And when we don't disagree with each other, we hate each other.

So, in the past we've had presidential candidates gunned down, most famously for a living generation, Robert F. Kennedy. George Wallace was shot in 1972 and was disabled.

HUNT: Tim, can I pause you for one second? And I'm sorry to interrupt you. I just -- we do have something a bit breaking on the other line. I want to bring in now Evan Vucci. He is an Associated Press -- the Associated Press senior photographer, and he is the person who shot this iconic image. Let's put it up on the screen there. He was that far away from Former President Trump last night, and this has quickly become the defining image likely of this entire presidential campaign and one that will immediately enter the history books as one of a moment that we all experienced together.

Evan, I'm very grateful to have you. The next three minutes are yours. Tell us what it was like to be there making that image, what went through your mind, and what this event says to all of us.

EVAN VUCCI, ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTOGRAPHER: Sure. Hey, Kasie. How are you? Yes, it was -- you know, I've done this hundreds of times. It was a normal rally. I was set up in the buffer, which is the area right in front of where the president speaks, and everything was completely normal.

Then over my left shoulder, I heard, you know, pops and I knew immediately what it was. And then, I just kind of went into work mode. And the Secret Service rushed the stage and I jumped up and I got there as quickly as I could and I'm photographing them covering President Trump. And then, I was thinking in my head, OK, what are they going to do next? How are they going to get him off the stage? Where is he going to go? How is this going to unfold? So, you're trying to make all those decisions in the moment.

And so, I ran to the other side of the stage thinking that that would be their evacuation route. And as the president was standing up, he started pumping his fists, and I saw the blood on the side of his face, and I -- and you know, you know that that was kind of the moment of what was -- you know, what was happening.

HUNT: It was. Evan, can you give us a sense, we've all seen the video now a number of times. Was he standing by the podium here? Is this where he's coming down off the stairs? And talk a little bit, too, about your past experience that gives you the ability to operate like this. And what's, you know -- we shouldn't be operating at a combat zone at a rally, but this is what happened.

VUCCI: Yes. No, I mean, I have experience. I covered Iraq and Afghanistan. So, you know, I've been in these situations before. So, you know, that experience does help trying to stay calm and understand like you have a job to do. And as a still photographer, I don't get a second chance. So, I knew that you have to just kind of keep your head and just do everything you can to document everything that's happening.

And I get all the photos, all the angles. Make sure your composition is right. Your light is right. You know, I mean, you kind of just go into work mode, man. And it's -- yes, that's what it was. And -- but, yes. So, where they're taking them off, it's just on the side of the podium. So, the Secret Service jumped on top of them right behind the lectern. And then, as soon as they stand -- stood him up, I knew that they were going to take them off that -- off the side of the stairs and then to the SCV waiting for him. So, I just waited to see you know what I could get.

[08:00:00]