#811 - Tim Kennedy - Emergency Episode: Special Forces Sniper Explains Trump Shooting
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Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. We have an emergency episode today in wake of the events this past weekend. Tim Kennedy is a Green Beret Special Forces sniper. He has worked on previous presidential details and has a lot of insight into what went wrong this weekend. And there's no ads, no edits, no nothing, just a raw unfiltered conversation. So please welcome Tim Kennedy. Three, two, one.

Tim Kennedy, welcome to the show. Hello, my friend. Busy weekend. Wild times we're living in. Busy weekend. Talk to me. How did this happen? I think it's the worst and scariest answer possible, which is like a balance of Occam's razor and Halon's razor. The first is...

so obvious about basically looking for the most simplest solution and the evidence supporting that and not looking for anything further than that, which leads us into Halen's razor, which is never attribute something to malice when it can be explained with stupidity. And if I go back, I don't want to start on Saturday.

Because I think that grossly misrepresents the problem. We have to go back three years and start looking at what has happened organizationally, what has happened with personnel selection, what has happened with training, what has happened with requirements.

what's happened with authorities, with authorizations, what's happening with the overall labor force within that specific organization, the government as a whole, Department of Homeland Security as a whole, who are the appointees, who did the appointees then appoint? And then when you take that big, huge picture and you then look at the actions on Saturday, which clearly had

Inept, negligent, incompetent, stupid people that did an abhorrent, dangerous job of doing the one thing, which is keeping their principle alive.

They did nothing. There was the only reason that that man is not dead, that the former president Trump is not dead is because his head at the very last second changed a few degrees and a bullet went past his ear instead of hitting his temple and taking out the back portion of his brain, which is not survivable. That is nothing that anyone else did. That was divine intervention or president Trump's luck.

Jesus Christ. You've worked presidential details before as well, right? So you know, for the people who don't know in what you might consider a more golden era, one that was more competent, just how thorough is the process for this stuff? Bring that screen down for me a little bit as well, if you would. Just lose a little bit of headroom. Yes, thank you. You see my big old neck, you know? You've got a fat neck. So what's supposed to be is that this is the most premier security detail on the planet.

This is the standard that everybody looks to, the competence, the selection, the training, the personnel. They have to be, because this is the leader of the free world.

That is who the American president is. And I'm going to talk about the position, not about any specific president, because this is not a partisan issue. You know, if you look there, there've been a total of 10 assassinations or assassination attempts on former presidents and 60% of them were Republican for 40% of them were Democrat. So like, it's not a partisan issue. Like, or I had a whole bunch of friends like, yeah, why is it always Republicans getting assassinated? It's like, like, I mean,

it's not always you know it's it's um it's it's a dangerous rhetoric and it's in a dangerous idea and it's a social contagion this thing that is hate when it moves into discourse that is directed in a very unhealthy way um so if we created this like spectrum this continuum

on this Halon's razor. On one side, we have this complete negligent, stupid, incompetent, inept, ignorant, just unable to do the job, which is being able to be capable to protect somebody. And then on the opposite end of the spectrum, on the total other end from just being incompetent, is complicit.

which is in cohorts with, which is enabling. And using that Halen's razor, if somebody is so, and these are not stupid people that are running these organizations that assigned the details to work for the former President Trump. If they are knowingly, if they are aware about how dangerously inept they are,

Uh, we met that we then move into the malice category. Then we move into the complicit category and that gets like, does that mean that this is like a deep state? Uh, like were they allowing this dude on a roof?

I mean, well, kind of like if they had, if they were so undermanned and they were so ill prepared and they were so untrained and the people that were there were following our hiring with DEI practices and they were too overweight to be able to get their work,

their own weapon and their holster. They are the ones that are cowering behind the stage or cowering behind the president. Why other people that are not even part of that organization are running up the staircase with their guns at the high ready, looking out into the audience and towards the direction of the gunfire, completely opposite reactions. It starts becoming very evident, uh,

about where, how, and how dangerous this situation not just was, but currently is because it's not fixed. The same Department of the same Homeland Security Director is in place. The same Secret Service Director is in place. Every single one of those people that have been hired and trained in the past three years are still part of that organization.

The group that investigated January 6th and then raided the president's own home, they're the ones that are doing the investigation around the assassination. Think about that for a second. And the people that are doing that are of the opposing party that's running for president in November.

This is wild. Let's go back to sort of what you know about the level of caliber of protection that happened on the day. I've heard that it was more Homeland Security contractors as opposed to Secret Service agents than there should be. I've heard that outside of a hundred-ish meter fence, it actually is local law enforcement officers as opposed to the actual Secret Service. What do you know about the detail that was there on the day?

Yeah, man, it is bad is what it is. So regardless of what personnel from which departments, whether it's state, federal, Department of Homeland Security, Secret Service, which is county, which is municipal city, ultimately under ICS, this is this command system that all goes up to who's in charge, which is the ground force commander.

that person is then leveraging and identifying threats, like most dangerous course of action, most likely course of action. They start from the site surveys that came in before the former president even got there. They've identified which buildings have line of sight of the president, which ones are in small arms fire, where a drone could be taken off from, which ones have vehicle access, what is an egress route, what is an exfil route, what is their infill route, where is the medical plans,

plays where are they jamming all all frequencies from um all of that stuff is done well ahead of time how long how well is well i'm so uh like i was just in france with president biden's secret service detail like a month ago um like on this this is uh and they are so good uh they are

The A-team, to put it mildly. All of those men, all of those guys were the best and the brightest. And I'm not disparaging the people that were on the ground on Saturday because their heart, I bet you, if we lined them up right here and I started interrogating them, they're like, I did my best.

And I believe that. They truly are public servants. They are trying their hardest with the resources they have, with the training that they have, with the God-given gifts and the current physical condition that they're in. And they were doing the best that they could with what they had, which just wasn't enough. And so what I know about on Saturday was...

President Trump's campaign has requested time and time again, and this is denied by Department of Homeland Security, for additional security. And it's been denied. Which is funny that they're denying it. They're denying that Trump's team has requested it because it's all going to come out. They have emails. It's so dumb to be like, oh yeah, they never said a request. I mean...

But, but they did, did they, you know, like here's an email about it, not like them requesting it. And then you gave them a bunch of hacks that don't know how to do their jobs. Um, so on Saturday they had the vast majority of the heavy lifting on the labor side was not secret service.

You had municipal, local law enforcement that this is what's wild. Staging area for the local law enforcement was immediately adjacent from the building where the shooter climbed up. Minds blown. So, you know, the security perimeter who is doing the who is.

allowing people into the venue, who is controlling the area outside of that perimeter. Normally that perimeter is set at least to the bare minimum of explosion and small arms fire.

like show about 1500 meters that's normally where that circle is um sometimes it's a little bit more sometimes it's a little bit less but generally that's well within the total protected area not 130 meters that's right that that is an impossibility there listen

zero chance. There is zero chance that everyone on the ground didn't know that that building with the direct line of sight and a hundred, and I think it was 151 yards from the, not the corner, which was 131 yards, but from the top where the guy, the shooter took the shot to where the president was standing at that moment was 151 meters. But

that every single person on the ground didn't know how much of a liability that building was. No way. How hard is that shot? My nine-year-old can do 10 out of 10. I bet you, you could find every single Texas kid that's... So in the hunting blinds in Texas, you set up the deer feeders about 150 yards. I hate saying yards, but...

a hundred freedom units. Yeah. Um, 150 yards from where the hunters climb up into their little hunting box and then shoot the animals when they go up to, to eat the corn or pick up the feed at the end of the day, nine to 11 year olds, seven to 11 year olds, every single one of them would be able to make that shot. Have you got any idea what the weapon was that the shooter was using? It looks like, it looks like an AR.

Chris, this is a really weird thing and I'm not putting on my tinfoil hat here, but photos are disappearing. There were photos that were initially being released

and both of the shooter, of him on top of the roof, clear pictures of the weapon. And I can't, you know, there was so much happening. I just walking up, I was at a military shooting range when somebody walked to their car and we were running like hammer drills. Like this blister is from the trigger guard of a rifle as I was shooting a couple of thousand rounds this weekend. And one of the dudes walks to the car and, and,

He's like, somebody just tried to assassinate President Trump. And this is all special operations, guys. And all of us are like, all right, whatever. Last time that happened was 1981. And they're like, no, no, I'm serious. So we're out in the middle of nowhere on a military shooting range. And so we're trying to drive back. I'm getting information. I'm seeing pictures. And I'm seeing posts. And you remember it was just fog of war.

Well, some of the stuff I saw, I can't find anymore. Like it's, it's there. There's accounts that I, that I know I saw it on. No, that account doesn't even exist anymore. And, uh, very interesting. Okay. So going, going, the thing that I'm most interested in learning from you, given that you are green beret, special forces, sniper, a lot of time around firearms and have done this from a presidential detail, the specifics around the shooter on top of the, uh,

roof, how he gets up there, how he isn't seen. And then the response specifically from the secret service snipers that can you just game out sort of what you think happened? Why, why they seem to hesitate, why they seem to flinch who shot first. Have you been able to work out any of that? Yeah. Yeah. Quite, quite a bit of it. Um, I was actually like taking some notes about it, trying to get my head wrapped around what seems like such an impossibility. And, um,

So this is, you can see this. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

All right. I'll go the other way. There we go. Over here is where the president, former president was standing. And this is the negative pitch roof. So he climbed up here. There's a ladder right there. And he climbed up on top and then clambered over to here. Back behind that, that parking lot back there is the staging area for the local law enforcement. So negative pitch roof, roof looks like this, right? Dude gets up on a ladder.

climbs up on top of the roof the fact that this building has a ladder and has a negative sloped roof hiding the person on the back side so uh a sector stack a sketch which would have a range card every counter sniper that is put in a position like that has this this diagram and on it it has the buildings it has distances you have target reference points you have um uh

So like you have pre-assigned distances, so you know what adjustments you need to make for every single shot from your left to right limit within your sector of fire. And on that range card, there is...

an gigantic X, which is that specific building. Because the security detail that did the survey of the area would have marked that this building has a ladder and that this building, which is in small arms fire, which this building has direct line of sight to the podium. We know that that counter sniper would have had that on his range guard in his sector sketch. And this supposed 20-year-old said,

walks around the backside of this building, goes to this ladder, gets up on top of this roof. Just to interject there, it seems like the ladder's already there. He didn't carry it in. It's like affixed to the back of the building or whatever. Right. Okay. Yeah. So there's two metal buildings and there's like this little valley between the two, which is ominously protected from most observation angles besides really just one direction. So like

And it's receded from the rest of the open space. All of the people at the rally saw this 20-year-old walk up with a rifle, start clambering up this building. And for four minutes, they're screaming for law enforcement to come over. And which one of them finally does?

goes up this up this ladder gets on top of the slope roof and the sniper is on the opposite end he's over here and as this guy is climbing up this this roof he cannot be seen until his head comes over like the prolongation like the top of the crest of that roof so it's it's it's actually a perfect location for an assassin to go in position which

Which is why it's so insanely believable that everyone didn't know about that roof.

Once he gets up there and people have been screaming that there's a guy with a gun over there, a law enforcement officer goes up. He climbs up the ladder. He takes a peek. The kid with the gun turns around, sees the cop. The cop jumps back down, gets scared from the kid with the gun. The kid turned back around, comes back and starts slinging some rounds towards the former president. So you think that the impetus for the shooter to begin firing was that he was stumbled upon by a local law enforcement officer?

Yep. I think that's why the shots were rushed and he shot so fast. And that's why there was such confusion. So if you go back to that kind of like instant command system, you do have one person in charge, but you have multiple organizations on a bunch of different frequencies of radio. I was going to say their communication from law enforcement to Homeland to special...

Right. Okay. Yeah. So department of Homeland security, um, the, you got like mall guards that are using a little Motorola radios, or maybe they're like texting each other. You got lock local law enforcement. Then you have County law enforcement. Then you have state law enforcement, all of them. They're all in different frequencies. All of them. Usually you take like one person.

that is from the command organization and you embed them with the other organizations so that that person can be like the conduit and continuity between that unit's communication back to the incident commander. That's normally what happens. But ultimately, you end up with a game of telephone that takes a few seconds for that information to get circulated around.

Obviously, now if we switch from where the Assassin's building is over to the Counter Sniper team, you can see for a good 40 seconds, they have directed all of their attention towards the Shooter's building, towards the would-be Assassin's building.

They're looking at it and he's doing the super amateur thing where he's coming off his glass. So just before you even do that, who is it that's going to be up there? Is that a spotter and a shooter? Is that two snipers? What's the kit that they're using, et cetera? Yeah. So you're going to have a sniper and a spotter, but the spotter also is a sniper.

So you have two really competent shooters. And I'm not going to get too really specific into the equipment that they're using because it's kind of sensitive. And people are going to try to kill the former president a whole bunch for the next four months.

And the last thing we want is people to understand the capabilities or the lack of capabilities around them. Probably safe to say that it wasn't basic kit. It's something that allows them to be very efficient very quickly. Yeah. Like every single shooter, every single PRS guy on the planet is like, oof.

that's a nice setup right there. You know, like that's the good stuff. That's a, that's a great caliber selection by the way, for a, for a person to include armor penetrating, you know, like, Hey, that's a really great laser range finder you got on there, man. That's a really fantastic optic you got on there. And that's a really great tool that, that assesses the wind and gives you a pretty accurate estimate. Hey, that's a really good set. Like it was all primo stuff. Okay. So talk me through what that sniper is doing.

Why is his body language the way? Why does he respond in that way? What do you think's going on? Yeah. So he's being fed information, right? He's like, okay, building...

Those numbers. So you have this GRG and this GRG, which is a grid reference guide that has you number all the buildings left to right one through 10. Right. So every single building on his whole entire sector sketch is numbered. So he knows, let's just say not that I've already done this, but from his position, that's building number three.

That building from his position is 151 yards. So he's looking at building number three on his GRG. He's talking to his sniper, his spotter. His spotter is giving him estimations. And they also set up

that they're slightly offset. So he has a kind of different perspective, but they're both looking in the same general area and they're supposed to be on different magnification areas. So they're able to see different things, but same, the same thing kind of simultaneously. Um, there's a lot of science around like how the sniper and the spotter work together. Um, and, uh, all the schools ultimately, Holy crap. Yeah.

uh, president Trump just picked JD Vance for VP. Oh yeah. That's been up a couple of hours, but yes, that'll be, I think that's, uh, I've been, I've been freaking working all day. Some operational excellence coming into the potential Republican white house there. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It's smart move. I think. Yeah. So,

That team, and I'm not using the word team lightly at all. They are a very cohesive unit. They spend a lot of time together. They know how they smell. They know how they breathe. They know when they're anxious. They know how each other's brains work. They...

they spend lots of time together. Um, and the time that they spent together is for them to be able to work in unison or like they can almost, almost like not that they're precogs, but they can anticipate what the other one's going to say and do. And as they're looking at the same area or the same thing, they're both like processing information. And when you have a really, really good team, this is what's so unique about a, with the right equipment, with the right personnel, with the right training, um,

The ability and the capability of that two-man sniper team is, yes, they can shoot something from a mile away, but they can also anticipate what is going to be happening in a battle space before anybody else on the planet can see it or understand it. And that is why they're so crucial as a counter-sniper element. Yeah.

And it's a really difficult thing to explain and put into words unless you've either experienced it as the shooter or counter sniper, or you've been on the receiving end of that capability, which is a pretty. Okay. So talk me through their actions, the flinching, the coming up off the glass, the standing up, the stances, all that stuff. Okay. This is the worst case scenario of all of the things that we've been seeing over the past three years.

And I'm just going to hypothetically paint an opposite picture here. A young black kid in Butler climbs up on that roof to get a view of former President Trump. Dude, all he wants to see is the man that his grandpa's been talking about and he loves. The man that's going to help them not be poor anymore.

And he picks his head up, looks over the top of that roof, and he gets his face caved in, canoed by a special operations sniper. That law enforcement for the past...

I mean, really bad for the past three years. But since the defund, the police movement, since countless indictments, since the gutting of the Department of Justice of every single good law enforcement officer, not every single one of them, there's still a few left, but not very many, because most of them have had to leave because of the toxic policies and the toxic hires and the toxic appointees. So that guy behind the gun, man, he does not have

the confidence that he can pull that trigger. And it's not until those rounds start going that he actually moves his finger to the trigger and moves into hunt mode. Is he got the clearance to be able to unload rounds without getting the okay from somebody on the radio? Yes. So he can make threat. What's that mean? Yeah, that is intentionally vague and ambiguous thing.

So a confirmed threat, bad guy with a gun pointing a rifle at the former president, smoke him, eliminate that threat. A head cresting the top of a rooftop? Nope. That's a very fine line. Just for clarity, this is the call is made by the sniper and spotter team. That's right. So they have like executive independent authority to be able to pull the trigger or not? On some things, on some things they don't.

Dig into that for me. So a clear threat to their principle, they have the authority to protect. Rounds started being sent towards the former president. Obviously, they have the authority without approval to pull that trigger. Hmm.

um do they have the authority to send around towards a potential threat a potential like let's define a potential threat and we're putting a timeline on a negative slope roof you know maybe maybe they never saw a gun they might not have do you think that they had been warned you said that they were already looking over at that building

Does that suggest that maybe something had come through some of the Chinese whisper comms and it was, "There's someone up there. We maybe need to look in that direction." Yeah. One, they already knew that that building was a threat.

Two, so they, like of that whole entire area, they have the water tower slightly to their right and they have that building slightly dead center. And this is their area. This is the area that they have been given, those two dudes. Yep. And that water tower and those, that little cluster of buildings are,

those are by far the highest concerning things. So like in their mind, in their subconscious, you know, yeah, they're scanning. Yeah, they're looking out into the crowd. Yeah, they're looking out into the parking lot, but they're also, they keep going back to that 151 yard building with a line of sight to the podium. What about the order of shots? What do you think? Have you been able to reverse engineer? So presumably it looks like the shooter got at least one off. Does he get? Yeah, I think he got like four or five off.

So what happens? Is that where we see the flinch? Where we see the, okay, so talk me through that. What's going on? Yeah. The second part of that question, your earlier question about

So they know that that building's a threat. And I think judging by both of their body language, that they're processing communication that's coming in about that specific thing. Because both of them weren't just like scanning. Both of them are zoned into that one building for about 40, 45 seconds. And they're coming off and they're looking specifically at that building. They're looking down their optics. They're looking down their binos. They're looking over their binos.

And this is what's really sad is that guy was close enough that they didn't need any magnification to see him. That's bad. Oh, because they can pop up and just look normally. Yeah. He's 150. Like he's one and a half football fields away.

Dude, look at how close that is. So they're literally just like coming off their optic and like looking at the top of a building and be like, yep, that's a dude all right. That's a bummer. Holy crap, he's shooting at us. And then he gets on the glass. So they're observing. They're processing all that communication that's coming in. Clearly like they're working together trying to figure out what it is. Then...

whether the shooter had to rush his shots, he comes up and over the top and you see him immediately, the sniper, the counter sniper, immediately go down back onto his glass because I think he knew he had to shoot. But then the shot started coming in. Then he jerked and had to get back on the gun. So what's that? Is that just the response to fuck this bullets coming? I don't think that dude's been in gunfights.

Yeah. Um, last night I was talking, uh, with a Canadian special operations guy that has the current and longest confirmed kill or his team does, um, which is like two miles. And, um, then I was talking with Rob O'Neill who is a Navy SEAL sniper and the three of us were kind of like nerding about, uh, around like ballistics and winds and all those things. Um, and, um,

The three of us were in agreeance in pretty much everything. But the thing that we just were astounded by was the level of experience and combat experience, especially with those immediately around the former president.

Just before we go on to kind of the tight detail, because there's a lot to talk about there, it seems to me, based on my total muggle knowledge of how this works, muggle knowledge, yeah, I know, normie knowledge, it seems like 150 yards-ish, 150 meters, is kind of a bit of a unique distance that it's very short for a sniper team, but it's also sort of too long. It seems like, based on what I'd seen, that a lot of what the snipers were looking at is way out beyond...

Is that 150 meter or is the fact that it's such an obvious potential assailant position that would have kind of overshadowed the fact that it's in this maybe Goldilocks zone of too long to be short, too short to be long? It is so close. In scanning, besides being great marksmen and being...

masters of lethality, snipers are observers first. They spend so much time... Some of them are must-pass events in sniper school. They take these men, they drop them into a middle-of-nowhere area, and out in front of them between...

50 and a thousand meters, there's a pair of binoculars, there's a scope, there's a guy in a ghillie suit, and they have to, on their sector sketch, mark every single one of those things. And those are graded and must pass events. Like if you can't find those things, so you have these swirl searches, you have these grid pattern searches, you have the book

Up to right or left to right top to bottom you're using all of these search techniques. You're changing focus from far away to up close In some of these static positions, you're not Seeing movement which is like one of the easiest thing to see but you're looking for shapes. You're looking for colors. You're looking for non-natural, you know material that's not that's reflecting and not you know, most natural things kind of absorb flight not reflect light and so

There's no way that both of those trained snipers, 150 yards is outside of the realm. It's not too close. It's not too long. It's not too anything. They're professionals. They're perfect. All right. So it looks like based on your assessment that maybe...

Maybe they've been warned. For some reason, they seem to have their attention very much on that building. We'll call it building three. And then they maybe see a guy. They come back up off the glass. They go back down onto it. Then first shot hits, which is the one where Trump just turns his head a tiny little bit, glances his ear. Then they flinch, come back up a second time, then go back down and presumably because he gets hit.

very close between the eyes, I think, based on the photos that I've seen. You reckon it's those guys that delivered that shot? There's no one else? I...

I don't think that there's no one else. We know that it was a Secret Service sniper that engaged him. The CAT team's doing their work. Yeah, within Secret Service, you have multiple teams from counter sniper teams. You had Red Cell teams that are like reverse engineering and doing all the threats, like lots of different really specialty teams. The guys that run up onto rooftops or ran up onto the stage wearing body armor with machine guns, right?

They fall into that category. They're rad. And they're like the direct action. When you see the plain clothes, people wearing like tacky, poorly cut suits with weird holsters, they're there to protect the former president. The people that rush out with long rifles, they're there to kill people.

and okay all right um yes okay so let's talk about the sort of what do you call it immediate detail what's what's the thing that encircles the president what is that called how are they selected where have they been drawn from and what do you make of the uh performance on saturday yeah i mean of all the bad stuff this might be the worst huh

And there's a lot bad here. And we're not even scratching the surface. And listen, I'm not like Monday morning quarterbacking this. You know, if you...

Everybody, to include the guys on the ground, who are going to be way, the guys and gals on the ground, are going to be by far the worst critics of this whole entire situation. I'm not saying anything that anyone else is going to disagree with, with maybe slight differences of perspectives or opinions. But generally, everybody in an AAR, an after action review, that does a sustains and improves of this operation, is going to come to generally the same conclusions.

And that's what we do after every single mission that we ever do is an AAR, an after action review. And then we break these things down by phase into just like we are, Chris. And in these phases, we say, all right, this is what went right. And this is what went wrong and improves and sustain. So improves are things that went wrong. We have to fix and improve on. And then these are the things that went well. And let's continue to do those. I do not have very many things in that latter category.

And under this phase, which is shots have just skipped off the president's ear. Man, are you really understanding how one mile an hour wind difference, one degree head direction in either direction? That bullet was already in the air when he turned his head to look at that graphic. No fucking way. Yes way.

I've seen the image where someone explained what a straight line does to the human head. At 151 yards, what that bullet does is takes off the backside of the brain. What's the caliber of round coming out of that, do you think? I think it's going to be an AR. I think it's going to be 5.56 to 2.3. I think it's going to be a 55 grain to a 77 grain traveling at 2,900 feet per second.

How close does that need to be to someone's ear to draw blood? Because presumably it could actually miss the ear and still just the, the pace going past. Yeah. Those, so 55 grains to 77 grain, uh, that, that five, five, six, and two, two, three, um,

that is a very small projectile that is moving really, really fast. The, the, the danger of that bullet is the energy that it carries because of its speed. So unlike a 50 Cal where like, you know, if a 50 Cal gets near somebody's head, you know, it's going to like jumble the brains. You're going to know about it. That's right. You know, like you're, if a guy, if a guy's waving and a 50 Cal bullet goes through here, the air displacement and energy of that bullet going by might blow that dude's arm off.

That's not the same with a 65-gram. Much smaller mass. Yeah. Okay. So, right, we're talking about this probably having nicked the skin then in order to have done this. It was just close. This is actually 50 Cent got shot. That's right. Yep. Bro. And then...

Okay, so that happens. Let's say that gold standard, you are the... What's it called? What's that immediate team called around the president? That's the principal security detail. Right. And they're the close...

proximity people usually bad haircuts bad suits they have all their weapons stashed up underneath them they're wearing um body armor not for themselves but to throw themselves on top of the principal to be able to protect him so they're going to be their bullet magnets their job is to absorb any threat that if that's over pressure like if that's a drone being flown in with c4 that's them to take

and be like literally blood bags to cushion an explosion. That's them being able to suck up all the bullets. You know, if you look, you talk about this a lot. If we talk about the Aurora, Colorado shooting, you know, every time you tell that story, by the way, you make me cry. Sorry. That's right. And it happened again on Saturday. You know what that dad did? The volunteer firefighter, guy that died. He threw himself on top of his family.

Yeah. That's why he was hit. That's right. Yeah. Give me, give me that masculinity by the way. Um, yeah. All right. Let me rally again. All right. The, um, God bless that family by the way. The, uh, so that detail, their job is to be looking out for

to anticipate, to prevent, and then in the worst case, respond and react by protecting and cushioning the literally becoming a human shield around the principle. That's what they're supposed to be doing. They failed. Some of them failed.

well some of them failed for the whole entire time but when you have a bullet that hits your principal you have failed right there's there's there's no there's no moment in all of this where you can be like all right those guys did a great job there um so sniper go ahead what do you make of the um criticism around

female secret service agents that aren't tall enough for the principal, that their head comes up to his chest line, that there's one that used him as a shield as she cowered behind. Yeah, I mean, just take gender out of that conversation. Take sex out of that conversation. I don't want to talk about male or female. You're either capable of doing the job or you're not capable of doing the job. You're either strong enough to pick up your principal and move him off the X. You're either large enough to block

that person that you're trying to protect or you're not. You're either trained enough and equipped enough and prepared enough to do the job or you're not. They're not. The women that were there, there's not just the one. So as shots are still being fired and you see bodies being flung on top of the former president as he's down on the ground, what an amazing photo, blood's dripping off of his face, and there is a woman

Secret Service agent that is hiding behind the president. Not on top of. She's hiding behind him, cowering, hoping to not get hurt when her one job is to put herself on top of the president. Go forward 10 seconds. The hammers start coming out. You see guys in body armor with helmets run out with guns. There's another photo of a Secret Service agent that is

Here we go. So here's the guys running up the other way, running up the stairs. 10 seconds later, and this is one of the photos I was trying to find. 10 seconds later, you see all three of these guys with their guns pointed out into the crowd. Guess where that girl is? That girl right there? She's still right there.

She's hiding behind the stage. These guys do their up guns in the high ready. They're on their optics. They are scanning. They are hunting. I'm telling you, if you farted weird, you're about to get around. And they were also positioning themselves to prepare for an exfil. And while they're doing that,

There's a Secret Service agent hiding behind her principal, and there's another Secret Service agent that's hiding at the base of the stage. Fired. They're fired. I like to say you're fired because it's such a Trump thing right now. But Department of Homeland Security,

New York is you're fired department of secret service. Uh, what's her name? Kimberly you're fired. Every single one of those DEI hires in the past three years, you're fired. You don't meet height and weight. You're fired. You can't pass a shooting test. You're fired. You can't do a site survey. You're fired. You didn't know that building three at 151 yards wasn't the highest risk possible and allowed a dude to clamber up and get on top and take a shot at your principal. You're freaking fired, man.

everyone's gone. And then don't get me started on the FBI or the Department of Justice, who are currently doing the investigation around the opponent to the reigning government, the FBI that just raided President Trump's home armed. They're the ones that are doing the investigation on the assassination of the organization under the... Bureaucracy doesn't help when there's bullets flying. Nope.

How big of a deal is this DEI initiative? I'm always hesitant about taking accusations that it happens to be some women there. Therefore, there has been this huge amount of hires. I did see a video talking about how the Secret Service wanted 30% female recruits by 2030. That makes me think, okay, this isn't just talking points. This isn't just a

slightly oddly skewed sex ratio of the president's detail. This is actually part of a broader narrative, a broader push to try and get more diversity into the Secret Service. Yeah, I have worked overseas with capable, competent, impressive women.

And again, this has nothing to do with sex. Male, female, you can either do the job or you can't. - But it's prioritizing diversity over competence. - And that's where things get dangerous. So we'll work from like mission. So the mission of the military, the job, the one job of the military is to be the most lethal fighting force on the planet.

climate. So with that, we'll brew that down into lethality. We are going to measure every single person's contribution to the government or to the Department of Defense into lethality. You either make it more lethal or you don't. If you don't make it more lethal,

You can't have the job. So on special forces selection, you are going to have a rucksack that weighs this amount. You'll have to move over this distance at this speed and you can either do it or you can't. And then you're going to have to be able to pick up for the ACFT for as an 18 Bravo, a special forces weapon sergeant. You're going to have to pick up this amount of weight this many times. You'll have to run this distance at this like very clear can, cannot, cannot.

And the reason of that is because you are going to be capable of doing the job. You're going to be lethal or you won't. That's black and white. It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter whether you're Asian. It doesn't matter whether you're a woman. It doesn't matter. Nope.

Look at the NBA. I see a ton of young Asian women out on the basketball court these days, and I'm really, really, really celebrating the DEI of the NBA. Congratulations. No, obviously not. There's not a single one out there. Why? Because they can't do it.

Right. There's not a little tiny white suburban mom that's going out to the NFL offensive line and be like, Hey man, listen, quarterback, I got you. Nobody's going to get past me. Right. And then Derek Wolf is like, I'm gonna take your face off. Then I'm gonna go kill that quarterback. Right. There's not a single one of them because they can't do the job.

on the firefighter side, on the law enforcement side, on the military side, like these on the flying a plane side. I don't care what color you are. I don't care who you have sex with. I don't care about any of it. You can either fly the plane and you can do the job or you can't. And what we're seeing right now is a really, really, really dangerous cross section of policies that have been implemented over the past three years. And it's about to get really bad, Chris.

Because all of these people that were hired over this DEI phase are now moving into legitimate roles like we just saw. Like you're not going to get hired yesterday or on Friday and then be on the principal security detail for a nationally presidential running election, right? That person was probably hired about five years ago.

Here we go. How different are the assessment criteria for men and women? I'd seen something about it's the like scaled version of the CrossFit workout for. Yeah, it's about 30% off everything. And what are some of those assessments? Running, pushups.

Um, some, some events don't even exist. Like there's a requirement for a man. Um, but like, we'll just, we'll just use running. So you have to run, uh, two miles in 13 minutes and 44 seconds. That's the man requirement to pass that a hundred percent. Um, the woman requirements is 15 minutes and 20 seconds.

This is how they get tricky on the numbers game. They both still have to pass at 80% for them to qualify for the job. So I can say, let's say I'm Kimberly at the Secret Service. Thank you for the appointment. I say, no, no, no, there's no change. They still have the same requirement. They have to pass at 80%. The standard of what makes 80% is... That's right.

And they've been doing it to a few different selections, to a few different assessments, and for a few different job selections. What did you make of the exfil, the exfiltration when Trump finally gets stood up? He says, I need to get my shoes. Apparently, he's knocked to the floor so hard that his shoes come off. I don't know how loosely you've tied your shoes. He's got giant feet too.

He's got a bruise on his arm, apparently from where he hit the ground so hard, obviously from being tackled to the combination of falling, ducking and being tackled to the floor. And then I hear like, what are we doing? What are we doing? Where are we going? Where are we going? A lot. And then eventually he stood up, he says, hang on. And then he gets taken out. And that really seems to kind of be a... He doesn't get taken out. Don't skip that. Give it to him. What do you do? He says... Running down his face. He gets a good photo op first.

That's the heart of that man, dude. He's not a normal person. Dude, I think it's the first time, I can say this because I'm British, it's the first time that I've looked at Trump as somebody who's genuinely admirable.

I, you know, he's sort of gregarious and he's got this sort of strange way of speaking and he's not from my country and he's all of these other things. He's lots and lots and lots of things, many of which are kind of bombastic and out there and all the rest of it. And I'm like, I kind of don't really fully understand him, although I respect him, but I wouldn't have said, oh, that's like an admirable man. You know, he's,

it's very difficult to work out and i saw that and i was then in playing golf the next day apparently sinking a 20 foot putt putt with a like two foot of break and saying unlike the sniper i don't miss when he when he sank it that's true a lot of things have been debunked but uh that that has uh

That seems to be an actual thing. Do you remember the Reagan? Do you remember the Reagan bit where the balloon pops and he goes, miss me? Yeah. That was it, dude. I really have felt in me, and again, I'm an independent. I'm not going to be able to vote in this country. I find him significantly more admirable than I did a few days ago. And maybe that's just unlocked a character trait that I'd overlooked.

Or maybe this is a genuine sort of pivot that many other people are going to feel too. But yeah, that was fucking badass. I don't consume media. I have for the past three days. I actually feel really gross about having to get information from media because I think it's so toxic and it's unhealthy. So I don't know the man that everybody knows as President Trump. I know Don Jr.,

I know Laura. I know a, from 2016, me going and he's like, I'm in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He comes in on during his campaign trail. And he's like, I want you to do the pledge of allegiance and the prayer. And hey, you better do it good. You know, he grabs my arm. He pulls me in like face to face. He's like, I want the pledge of allegiance to be like good. You know, he's like, I'm a professional fighter. First of all, like,

Don't try to intimidate me like that, but that was pretty intimidating. Um, so like, I don't, and so I've never, and I get that and I really appreciate your kind of transparency and perception of him, but I only know like this man that when in Charlotte a few months ago, I sit down and he's like, Hey Tim, I want to know what's happening with veterans and suicide.

We can talk about anything that he wants. And the thing that he wants to talk to me about is the border because he knew I'd spent time on the border and he wanted to know about veterans, their mental health and suicide prevention. This is Trump or Trump Jr.? No, this is Trump. And I mean, don't get me started on Don. Like Don's hilarious. Not his persona. I'm talking about the man, the hunter, the father, like

The guy's epic. And I judge a lot of people by their kids. And I know his kids way better than I know him. And I'm just, they're amazing people. So I'm glad that people got a snapshot of the guy that I know. Yeah, it's interesting. There is no more costly signal than after you've just been shot

how you respond after that. It's very difficult to deny that that guy is built different. And I'm not a sycophant, dude. Like this will be the first time I think I've ever complimented Trump because I was largely...

unsure and the way that he behaves doesn't make it easier to kind of trust because he seems so much like the wwe character that he briefly has starred as um that it's hard it's hard it's but now and this isn't to forgive things he's done whatever like say he's a fucking saint i'm like that guy's a badass he's an actual badass no like how few people you're talking like

like less than a thousand people on the planet who to whom that would have happened and would have then stood up and said wait wait wait yeah and pump the fist anyway let's just finish off the round out the getting him off the stage getting him to the car thing yeah the uh this is just a cluster

this is like as infuriating and sloppy as everything else has been. This was like next level amateur. So there's no command who's actually in charge of getting him off the stage. Clearly nobody knows where is he going? They had not rehearsed the exfil of their principal vehicle placement.

weight, when I say weight, like his weight, their ability to move him, they can't do it. They have not practiced and rehearsed. They haven't gone and found a 365 pound guy and been like, all right, how do the five of us move this guy?

They haven't done that. And then not knowing where they're going to move him or how they're going to move him and then what they're going to do with him once they get him there, trying to get him in that car and the cluster that happened around that car. Girl has her gun out. She's trying to look around. She tries to put her gun away. She can't get her gun away. Can't even find her holster because her stomach is so large. Her suspenders are holding up her pants. And then finally when she is like, all right, forget it. I'm not going to get my gun away. I'm just going to keep it out.

The fact that you're keeping your gun on the five o'clock of your hip, what security person on the planet is like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to take my gun. I'm going to put it over my right butt cheek. That's a good place to have a gun. What's the problem with that? You can't get to it. It's a slow draw.

Like, we'll do this, Chris. I'm going to give you a paintball gun and I'm going to have you take that gun and we'll put it on your hip. I'm going to take a gun and I'm going to put it on your,

the natural line of my hands, or I'm going to do it in a cross carry. If I'm in a high position like this, which we call it interview position, which is how most of them stand, they stand like this, or they stand like this, or they stand like this, or they do, they do things like with their hands as they're, as they're talking. It's because they keep their guns like here. So they can just go like this and they get a gun out. And, uh, and then we'll do a three count and we'll see who's going to shoot each other in the face with the paintball.

Yeah, that sounds like a good afternoon for you. Not for me. That's right. So it's about a half a second to three quarter second difference. And then you add clothes, garments, it just gets you. Panic. Well, I mean, I've spent time around you and your guys, and I've seen people who are significantly less experienced than you handle weapons in Austin shooting. And

It feels like it might be hard for someone that's not been around elite shooters to understand, especially the guys from Atomic Legion, some of the dudes that are competitive shooters who have maybe put similar sorts of numbers of rounds as like some soldiers would have done.

their firearm is like an extension of their body. It's so blind. Do it in the dark. Do it without looking. It's an obscene level of competence. What are you pointing your camera at? What is this? That's a gun right there. Yeah, you came in when we did a...

there's another one right there yeah you know like this is it's just part of our life um it goes with us everywhere that we go i shot 2 800 rounds on saturday and sunday of this weekend this right here that is a is a callous blister burst from the trigger guard of my rifle from shooting 1500 rounds out of my rifle in two days

So anybody that is sufficiently competent and familiar with their firearm would not have encountered the problem of not being able to holster their weapon? No. Every shooter on the planet...

watched everything that unfolded for about 25 seconds in disgust and shame about how inadequate, inadequate and inept that group of people were. So to kind of go back to the high level stuff, it seems like the pool from which the Secret Service is able to draw has maybe been derogated a little bit in terms of competence and quality.

prioritizing perhaps diversity over just straight up capacity, then it seems like the volume, the number and the quality from this reduced pool that was given to Trump

That was dropped. And then there is also on top of that being probably a number of intelligence and sort of operational failures. So it's a poor pool, which is drawn from to a too small task force with too few capacities, which has been deployed in a manner where the intelligence and the awareness has not been done in an effective manner. Is that kind of encapsulating the

In broad strokes, in wavetops, when you get into the minutia and you break down into those three gross categories, all of the different failures that they make in both selection of the people, how they're trained, who is hired, then it starts getting like...

wild because if you're faithful in the small things, you're going to be faithful in the big things. You can't be faithful in the small things unless you're diligent and disciplined in the little things. And what you see here is millions of little decisions that lead up to a catastrophic failure. And not that all decisions were made that were made were bad, but the vast majority of them now cumulatively, clearly the byproduct of that is a broken organization.

What do you think happens from here going forward? Nothing for four months. What do you mean? Say more. You think the government with the president that wants to win an election is going to be providing a bunch of... Last night, President Biden did a live speech to the entire nation about the assassination attempt of the opposing party's nominee.

The first words out of his mouth were, I fired my appointed Department of Homeland Security director. Nope. Nope. Those weren't. He never did that. Did he fire the head of Secret Service? No. Didn't do that. The FBI currently has this 20-year-old's phone in Quantico and they're doing...

Did you read all of the release about the motive? And no, they didn't do that. Why? Because it negatively affects their position of power. And there's no benefit for them to do anything better. I think for President Trump to survive the next four months to the election and the next six months to the inauguration is he has to bring in private security. He calls up someone like you or Eric Prince. We're talking...

Those are good names. And nobody's better than that man. And talking to him yesterday, he very wisely pointed out every single way that they, when I say they, the, when I say they, it's just people in power that want to remain in power.

And in either side, it's not it's still not like a partisan thing, you know, of the 10 people that there are assassination attempts against of our 50 50. Yeah, it was 60 40. You know, like, it's not a partisan thing. And they just want to stay in power.

The Raytheons, the Halbertans, the Dinocores, the KBRs, the Boeings, the Lockheed Martins, they want more war and they want to stay in power. What would you look out for over the next week or couple of weeks? There's going to be a lot of people who think, God, that was a lot of news and a lot of time. I don't really know what to pay attention to. What would be the things that you would say, hey, you're a civilian, you don't really understand too much about what's going on, but this is what I would try and pay attention to over the coming weeks?

I think it's really important to listen to... So we got a very rare opportunity, which was to look past the shtick that is President Trump. Now that you got a glimpse of what there is, if you, one, register to vote, I don't care what side of the party you're on. I don't want to hear your complaints. I don't want to see your TikTok. I don't want any of it. Go and vote in November. Go and vote. Go register to vote.

and then go and vote. But now that you got a little peek at the wizard behind the smoke in the mirrors, look for that. Go and look at a man and look at what he's going to do in Milwaukee and then go and vote in November. Yeah.

Tim Kennedy, ladies and gentlemen. Tim, I appreciate it. Emergency episode, needed to get this one done. I'm sure that you're going to be all over the news over the next couple of weeks as well. So I very much appreciate you finding time to speak to me. Anytime. Can't wait to work out with you, dude. Soon. Cheers, man. All right. Take care.