Trump escapes would-be assassin as Iran talks stall | Planet America

Hello there, welcome back to Planet America's Situation Room, I'm John Barron. I'm Shetlar Jadalla and we've certainly got another situation.

Some breaking news from Washington DC. President Trump evacuated tonight. The after gunman opens fire.

Shocking security breach outside of one of Washington's most high profile events.

As Donald Trump escapes another would-be assassin, we'll speak to one of the reporters in the room where it happened.

And the Iran ceasefire holds, but peace talks have stalled while Trump gets sucked in by AI. But first...

Minutes before a gunman stormed a security checkpoint outside the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel, President Trump's press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, told Fox News...

He is ready to rumble. I will tell you this speech tonight will be classic Donald J Trump. It'll be funny, it'll be entertaining,

there will be some shots fired tonight. She didn't mean that literally of course but it was clear that Trump was getting ready to let the press corps have it with both barrels. Again, metaphorically speaking. But then, as we now know, a man armed with a firearm opened fire, sparking panic and confusion in the packed, noisy ballroom, and the President and First Lady and other VIPs were quickly whisked away. Until this weekend, Donald Trump had been the only sitting president

not to attend a Correspondents Association dinner since it was founded more than a century ago. He spent his first term railing against what he called the fake news media and he refused to show up and break bread with his perceived enemies. Appearing back at the White House press briefing room after the dinner and speech were cancelled on the orders of the Secret Service, a surprisingly jovial President Trump, still dressed in black tie and tux,

suggested that his planned speech would now have to be rewritten.

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 what... So I'll 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.

President Trump says the dinner will be rescheduled for some time in the next month. We'll soon see if his mellow mood lasts until then. While the latest act of violence involving the American President wasn't as close as his brush with death in Butler, Pennsylvania almost two years ago, it will no doubt revive some trauma for President Trump and those closest to him. Erica Kirk, the widow of assassinated conservative organiser Charlie Kirk, who was gunned down on a college campus in Utah last September, was among the guests huddled under their tables in the Hilton ballroom

just after the shots were fired outside. Robert Kennedy Jr. the controversial Health and Human Services Secretary, whose father Bobby of course was shot and killed in a hotel kitchen while running for president in 1968 was also among the officials to be inherently removed from that ballroom by the Secret Service. All serving as a reminder that gun violence in America reaches across political lines and can affect anyone.

From a child walking to school to the President of the United States preparing to deliver a speech. Homicide, deadlier forms of domestic violence, suicides, assassinations, accidents, firearms in total claim a massive human toll in the United States, as they have now for decades. Among the hundreds of reporters and White House correspondents at the dinner was Eric Garcia.

He's the Washington bureau chief for the Independent. He described how the night unfolded. Eric Garcia, welcome to Planet America. Can you cast your mind back to the events of last night and when did you realize that

something had gone wrong? We were on the salad course and then they said you know enjoy your meal. I was going to say hi to some of my friends at other news outlets and then you know I was sitting down with my colleagues at The Independent and we were just kind of joking around. All of a sudden, like this couldn't have been like 15 minutes in, 15, 30 minutes in, all of a sudden we hear like pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. I think the first time you wonder, okay, the first pop you hear, you think, okay, what

is that? The next two, you're like, oh God, I think that was a shooter. And that immediately enters your mind because this has happened before. And so immediately everybody gets on the ground. Everybody gets on the floor. We know what is happening.

We know that there's a gunman. And all of a sudden, so like I'm right at the table, right by the main entryway where like the Carla guards and everybody was coming through and where you're supposed to go right down. And so all of a sudden you just see Secretary Hedgeseth, Secretary Bessett, Secretary Wright, and Secretary McMahon bolt through to get out of there. Obviously it's national security. The

Speaker of the House was there. So, you know, thankfully the Speaker of the House was removed immediately. They evacuated the room. So we're there for about, I want to say, like better part of an hour. And so that that is really just what happened.

So Eric, this is a very unusual event and security situation, given that the president, the next in line, the vice president and the next in line to become president, the Speaker of the House, are all in the one room at the one time.

Absolutely. What I should add is that Secret Service was exceptional in removing the president as soon as they heard the pops. Clearly they had learned from the last time when the president was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania. They immediately removed Secretary Kennedy, they removed all the major principals.

There were so many ways this could have gone wrong. There were so many ways this could have gone terribly because when we got into the main area, all we had to do was flash a ticket, no photo ID. And then, you know, there's the red carpet area. There were already some protesters at the red carpet area

before the president arrived who got in. And I remember thinking to myself, how did they get in? But then again, I thought, oh, there's no magnetometers. And keep in mind, this is an active functioning hotel because the Washington Hilton is huge. So really like, what you realize is that there were so many other ways that this could have gone wrong

that this could have gone awry. Secret Service handled it probably as best as they could. And then what happens is you go down the levels and then you go through the magnetometers, which are the metal detectors, and that's where you go down the levels and then you go through the magnetometers, which are the metal detectors, and that's where you go. But like, you know, again, Secret Service handled this probably as best as they could, because this is a working functioning hotel. So having been there, Eric,

do you think it's fair to say that maybe because this event has been at this hotel for decades, there maybe was a little bit of complacency around the security. Absolutely. I mean, I think there might have been, there might not have been. I don't want to say they took it for granted, but I think that they thought that the standard protocol was just going to work without taking into account that, you know, we are in a heightened time of political polarization. There have been multiple assassination attempts on President Trump's life. We are in the middle of a war right now. And I think that all those things need to be taken into account when you're considering security for events like this.

Eric, we know from what the President has said, what the Press Secretary has said, that he was planning on giving a very aggressive speech attacking the White House Press Corps. But now that both the President, his administration and the reporters have all collectively been some survivors of an attempted assassination.

Could this change the dynamic between them all? It might but I wouldn't necessarily hold my breath. I think that there might be, you know, maybe one or two days of cooling off. But immediately afterward, as you saw, the President began talking about his ballroom and said that this is the need, this emphasizes the need for his ballroom. I'm sure that within a few days he's going to go back to calling us the enemy of the

people or, you know, insulting Caitlin Collins or insulting some other people.

Now Eric, not to make unduly light of the situation, but watching intently the C-SPAN live feed from this event, I couldn't help but notice that some of your fellow reporters were taking the opportunity to take home open bottles of wine that had been on their tables when they were evacuated. Did you do anything like that?

Well first off I should say I'm six years sober, I'm going on seven years sober, so I did not take a bottle of wine. But my whole feeling is look, our news outlets pay for the tickets to go to This is you know, there's no such thing as a free lunch There's no such thing as a free dinner Our news outlets are paying for all this food and the nonprofits are so if we're paying for the tickets Why not take some of them I did I am going to admit I stole a few

Burrata's from some leftover salads just because I like cheese I did swipe a dinner roll on a little ball of butter just to nosh on, just because we didn't have a main course. But still, we were protein deficient, man.

Well, Eric Garcia, sincere congratulations on your sobriety and thank you for taking the time to talk to us here on Planet America.

Thank you so much.

And John, Eric's probably right that the frosty relationship between the president and press is set to continue on. The alleged shooter's manifesto has been released, assuming it's authentic. And we saw when the President was asked about it by Norah O'Donnell on America's 60 Minutes, Trump's not exactly in a collegial mood.

So called manifesto is a stunning thing to read, Mr. President. He appears to reference a motive in it. He writes this, quote, administration officials, they are targets. And he also wrote this, I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor

to coat my hands with his crimes. What's your reaction to that?

Well, I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would, because you're horrible people. Horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I'm not a rapist. I didn't rape anybody.

Oh, you think he was referring to you?

Excuse me. I'm not a pedophile. You read that crap from some sick person. I got associated with stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated. Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones that were involved with,

let's say Epstein or other things. But I said to myself, you know, I'll do this interview and they'll probably, I read the manifesto, you know, he's a sick person, but you should be ashamed of yourself reading that because I'm not any of those things.

Mr. President, I was never. Excuse me. Excuse me. You shouldn't be reading that in 60 minutes. You're a disgrace. But go ahead. Let's finish the interview.

The other thing that he wrote in the.

You're disgraceful.

And now to the US war with Iran, where the latest round of planned face-to-face peace talks scheduled to be held in Pakistan collapsed before they even began for the second time in days. The week began with another ceasefire deadline looming, although nobody was really sure exactly when it was.

There have been conflicting reports on when the ceasefire with Iran is supposed to end.

As of last night, President Donald Trump says the ceasefire with Iran will end tomorrow evening.

Either way, it wasn't looking good, particularly when the President gave this dire prediction.

Well I expect to be bombing, because I think that's a better attitude to go in with, but we're ready to go.

And as once again the clock ticked down to some time, all eyes were on President Trump's social media site.

And that wasn't looking too good for the peace-nick side.

I'm winning a war by a lot. Iran has violated the ceasefire numerous times.

But then, after claiming Iran's leadership was seriously fractured and hadn't come up with a unified proposal

Trump announced that instead he would

Extend the ceasefire until such time as the proposal is submitted and discussions are concluded one way or the other

Although Trump resisted his usual urge to set another deadline, Chas. Well, officially he resisted, John. But then Trump's people told Axios on the sly that Trump is willing to give another three to five days of ceasefire to allow the Iranians to get their shit together. And that was five days ago, for those counting. This is the problem when you set five successive deadlines, where you threaten people every single time with this kind of rhetoric.

I just spoke with President Trump for about 20 minutes and he told me if Iran does not sign this deal the whole country is getting blown up.

And that was two deadlines ago. After a while, John, people stop taking you seriously and they don't even turn up to the talks. So it seems. Meanwhile, Iran wants everybody to know that it's going to continue to enforce its blockade on the straits as long as the US continues to blockade Iran's ports.

Tonight, the Iranian regime putting out video claiming to show its troops attacking and seizing commercial ships

in the Straits of Hormuz.

A potential act of war, although Trump kind of shrugged it off.

Their military is totally defeated. They're outside of the little wise guy ships. I call them the wise guy ships.

But those wise guy ships are still able to lay real sea mines. And according to the Washington Post, the Pentagon has already warned members of Congress that it could quote take six months to fully clear the Strait of Hormuz of mines deployed by the Iranian military and that is just what has been put in so far. The Trump administration quickly dismissed what they called the post's false claims and the president followed

that up with yet another threat. President Trump says he has ordered the US military to shoot and kill any Iranian boats that deploy mines aiming to choke traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

So he wants to kill boats now. There was some more good news. Turns out that Trump wasn't really planning on nuking Iran that time that he warned that a whole civilization will die tonight.

Why would I use a nuclear weapon when we've totally, in a very conventional way, nuking Iran that time that he warned that a whole civilization will die tonight.

Why would I use a nuclear weapon when we've totally in a very conventional way decimated them without it. No I wouldn't use it. A nuclear weapon should never be allowed to be used by anybody.

Well good to hear.

Great news John. But look a couple of things. First on that decimated navy that Trump referred to before. According to CBS News, American officials told them 60% of the IRGC's Navy remains intact and about two-thirds of their Air Force is apparently operational as well. You don't hear that very often, do you?

Something off from Trump. But leaving aside any bluster from the White House, this blockade-off does favour America a huge amount. Not only do oil exports provide the lion's share of Iran's income they need to pay everyone but also there is a ticking clock on not exporting oil.

Iran produces about a million barrels of oil a day and that oil either needs to be exported or stored somewhere. Analysts estimate that Iran had about 12 to 13 days worth of storage at the start of this blockade. So by around now, they should be reaching saturation point and at that point Iran needs to start shutting in wells. But these structures need to constantly operate or they become damaged

and then produce significantly less oil in the long run. So that is a huge problem for Iran and if Trump could just back off for a week or two and stop goading them on social media maybe Iran would back down. That is if he could do that. Two weeks ago we told you about Trump's battles with the Pope. At one point Trump argued that the Pope didn't care about the Iranian people like Trump did and he started saying things like this.

Iran is going to execute four more protesters, including the first woman protester.

What do you tell Iran? Tell that to the Pope.

Then a few days later that report of a woman facing execution in Iran morphed into this pro-Israel activist tweet claiming the Islamic Republic was preparing to hang 8 women, accompanied by these sus-looking glamour shots of the supposed women. Now that claim went viral and was soon boosted by Trump, who posted, To the Iranian leaders who will soon be in negotiations with my representatives, I would greatly appreciate the release of these women.

And then the day after, Trump posted Very good news! I have just been informed that the 8 women protesters who are going to be executed tonight in Iran will no longer be killed. 4 will be released immediately and 4 will be sentenced to one month in prison. I very much appreciate that Iran and its leaders respected my request as President of the United States and terminated the planned execution."

And Carolyn Leavitt paid full tribute to Trump's amazing achievement.

Only President Trump could save the lives of these eight beautiful Iranian women who he has received direct word from the Iranian regime or what's left of it, that their lives are going to be spared. Now that will happen thanks to President Trump because he's a humanitarian at heart.

I know this will shock you, but not everyone believed Carolyn Leavitt. The Iranian embassy in South Africa posted, hooray, Trump saved eight AI generated people! And then they trolled the White House by suggesting eight other Iranian girls are going to be executed in Iran tomorrow. Ask Trump to help.

With eight obviously AI generated faces. The media outlet of the Iranian judiciary said that Trump's empty handedness in the battlefield has pushed him towards fabricating achievements from false news. But interestingly, it also said none of these individuals had received final death sentences and that some had already been released. Some have charges that if confirmed will ultimately result in prison sentences, they said. So Iran's own news service was saying that they were not AI.

Interesting. And as it turns out, there is a reason for that.

According to CBC, composite Trump shared. The women's faces were each placed on black backgrounds modified from their original sources. Through reverse image search, we were able to match each of the images to the names of eight Iranian women.

So, yes, the original photos had been altered. They were given stylized black backgrounds. They were given beauty filtering. They were given smoothing using AI retouching.

They were AI enhanced for sure. But they were real women. These are the women's real photos. They are all real people who had real run-ins with the Iranian law after the real protests earlier this year. And at least this woman here, Bita Hamati, has been sentenced to death for real.

And according to Iranian human rights organizations, not only has she been sentenced to death, but these women have also been arrested, but under unknown charges or sentences. So we have absolutely no idea what situation they're facing.

And these two women, we really have no idea about, they've gone missing for months. Not so funny now is it? The fact is both Trump and Iran are lying about this story and when you throw AI into the mix it leads to a whole bunch of confusion and cynicism and frankly we simply cannot know the full truth. And John that might be what a lot of our fact checks are going to look like in a few years' time.

It's a brave new world, and we don't know the truth about it at all. Yeah, I'm glad I got out of the business a few years ago. Meanwhile, the revolving door that was very much a feature of the first Trump administration, where Cabinet secretaries and White House staff were routinely sacked via tweet is spinning again.

Last week, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez de Rima followed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi to be ushered out the door this year.

Today's resignation comes after multiple allegations that Chavez de Rima abused her position. Those allegations include having an affair with a subordinate and drinking on the job. Reports of investigations into her conduct

began surfacing back in January.

That's just the beginning, John. Chavez de Rema also apparently took her staff to a strip club when they were on an official department trip. And she's also said to have asked staff to pay attention to her father and husband

which is particularly problematic because her husband was eventually banned from the Labor Department's headquarters after two women there reported that he had sexually assaulted them. And there is so much more. Sadly we only have a half hour show so we can't fit it all in. But the important thing was, Chavez de Rima was due to be interviewed by the Inspector-General about all of these allegations and so much more this week. And that, John, might explain the timing of her departure. Oh, so cynical.

But just in case you were thinking that it's only female cabinet members getting shown

the exit at the moment.

This morning, Navy Secretary John Phelan is out. Effective immediately. A Pentagon spokesman adding, we wish him well in his future endeavors.

So long John, but Phelan's ouster as Secretary comes of course as the US Navy is enforcing that blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. And according to The Guardian, it came because of a poor relationship with the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. And a Pentagon view that John Phelan was moving too slowly on shipbuilding reforms that Trump personally wanted. Presumably the new Trump class of battleship. And there may be more sackings on the way. Politico reported this week that Republican senators believe that Commerce Secretary Howard

Lutnick, the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and FBI Director Kash Patel could be at risk of leaving, voluntarily or not. Describing President Trump as being quote, in a bad mood and preparing to let a lot of them go. And if you were placing a large bet on prediction markets, which someone in the Trump administration almost certainly is,

you'd like the odds of Kash Patel being the next official to get the boot.

Citing more than one dozen sources, The Atlantic is today reporting on a series of alarming alleged episodes during Kash Patel's tenure at the FBI that have led officials to fear that the FBI is not ready to handle the many national security threats the country is facing.

In the Atlantic's report, Patel is accused of both conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences. Meetings and briefings had to be rescheduled for later in the day as a result of his alcohol-fuelled nights. And most remarkably, that a request for breaching equipment, basically a battering ram normally used by SWAT or hostage rescue teams to quickly gain entry into a building, was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors. That's not a good look for the FBI director to be partying in that way, especially when

the United States is at war with a known state sponsor of terrorism. And as The Atlantic notes, the Department of Justice Ethics Handbook clearly states that an employee, including the FBI director, is prohibited from habitually using alcohol or other intoxicants to excess. Meanwhile, scenes like this are coming back to haunt Kash Patel as he's celebrated with the US men's ice hockey team gold medalists with a brewski or two. A little incident would have probably had J Edgar Hoover rolling in his ball gown, Chas.

Although Director Patel does say this Atlantic report is fake news and he is suing them for

a quarter of a billion dollars.

I'm on the job, I'm the first one in, I'm the last one out. I'm like an everyday American who loves his country, loves his sport of hockey and champions my friends when they raise a gold medal and invite me in to celebrate. I've never been intoxicated on the job, and that is why we filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit. And anyone of you that wants to participate, bring it on. I'll see you in court.

John, this lawsuit's actually been filed in the same week as another lawsuit from Cash Patel was dismissed by a court. And that lawsuit was also trying to sue people accusing Cash Patel of partying too much. In particular, they made this claim.

What do you make of that? That he's just been a little less visible than I think a lot of people, Trump observers, expected he would be.

Yeah, well, reportedly he's been visible at nightclubs. Far more than he has been on the 7th floor of the Hoover building.

Okay, so why would this lawsuit now do any better than that last lawsuit did? Honestly, I'm not sure. To win a defamation lawsuit as a public figure in America, you need to do a lot. You need to be able to show that not only the story was false, but the publication showed actual malice when publishing that article. As in, they knew the story was false, or they should have known it was false, but they couldn't have been bothered investigating properly. It's a hard thing to show. And it's especially

hard to prove when the reporter, apparently in this case, interviewed more than two dozen people to write her story, including current and former FBI officials, staff at law enforcement and intelligence agencies, hospitality industry workers, members of Congress, political operatives, lobbyists and former advisors. But even more so, the main hook that drives this article is that two weeks ago Kash Patel was struggling to log on to an internal FBI computer system and he became convinced

he'd been locked out. So he panicked, frantically calling aides and allies to tell them he'd been fired. That was according to nine different people. Strangely though, there was only one easily verifiable fact in that story I just related to you. And that is the one fact that Kash Patel's lawsuit backs up. They said that Kash Patel had a routine technical problem

logging into a government system which was quickly fixed. That's their lawsuit. They've confirmed the story is true. The rest of that story was mostly just opinions from nine people about Patel's state of mind when he was locked out.

Strangely, Kash Patel himself denies that he was locked out from the system despite his own lawsuit so he's contradicting himself when he's filed in court.

Just explain the computer login issue. You were not able to log into the... Your lawsuit contends that you were not able to log into the system. What did you think after you were unable to log into the system?

Let's have a survey. How many of you people believe that's true? The simple answer to your question is you are lying. And every time you do so, I've answered your question. It's simply as follows. I was never locked out of my systems.

Anybody who says...

Your lawsuit says the opposite.

Anyone that says the opposite is lying.

So I guess his lawsuit's lying then. This whole thing is a mess. Maybe he was drunk when he filed that lawsuit. Or maybe this is not about winning a lawsuit. Maybe it's about punishing reporters who criticise him, which would explain why, when the New York Times

wrote about Kash Patel's girlfriend earlier in the year, the FBI began investigating the reporter. Ironic, given the story had been about Kash Patel using bureau personnel for his personal services. Agents not only interviewed Kash Patel's girlfriend and examined databases for information on the reporter, but they recommended moving forward

to determine whether the reporter broke federal stalking laws when writing her story. Not that any of that would necessarily bother Trump but he is apparently not a big fan of drinkers. So we'll see how that goes for Kash Patel.

One of the most brilliant minds of his generation.

The drug costs are going down.

He saw the world.

We're going to get the drug prices down, not 30 or 40 percent.

In ways no one could imagine.

We're going to get them down 1,000 percent.

This lies at the base of 150 years of economic theory.

The extraordinary gift.

Slash prices on drugs and pharmaceuticals by as much as 400.

That set him apart.

500.

Would push his mind.

And even 600%.

Beyond its limits.

He deals with conspiracies.

Yes, yes I know.

President Trump has a different way of calculating percentage. She was ridiculing President Trump for his math, and she was saying, it's mathematically impossible to have a drug drop by 600%.

I said, how could that be possible? How could it be possible?

And I said, well, if the drug was $100, and it raised the price to $600, that would be a 600% rise. Well, if it drops from 600 to 100, that's a 600% savings.

That's right.

Right, right, right.

He has lost his grip on reality.

FIFA Peace Prize winner Donald Trump and raccoon penis remover Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Bob, what have you? Junior.

What a view. I'm speaking with myself because I have a very good brain. A great, big, beautiful

mind.

And that is all for another trip to Planet America. We'll be back on ABC TV at the same time next week and anytime you like on ABC, iview, YouTube and Facebook.

And there's another Planet Extra pep podcast coming out tomorrow where we discuss prediction markets and Virginia redistricting and we use our extra time to tell you more Chavez Dorema stories.

See you then. See you then.

Bye.