Transcript
SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Now updates on the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. A number of investigations are underway. The FBI is looking into the attack as a potential act of domestic terrorism. President Biden has ordered an independent security review and says he's committed to sharing the results publicly, and House Speaker Mike Johnson says Congress will carry out a full investigation as well. But what are the broader security implications of the shooting? For that we have called Republican Congressman August Pfluger of Texas. He's chairman of the homeland security counterterrorism, law enforcement and Intelligence subcommittee. Congressman, welcome.
AUGUST PFLUGER: Sacha, thank you for having me. Good morning.
PFEIFFER: Good morning. And actually, before we turn to that, I assume you were listening along while you waited to the conversation we just had, and you probably haven't had much time to digest this. But if you have, I'm interested in your perspective on that. Again, we've had a judge dismiss the classified documents case against Donald Trump. This is a judge appointed by Trump, and it's the first day of the Republican National Convention. Any thoughts you want to share on that?
PFLUGER: Well, obviously, we're going to be reading, you know, the written statement by the judge. I do believe, on first glance, the judge got it right. And I think this is important. We have Jack Smith, who was not Senate-confirmed, not unlike some of the other special counsels. And I think the bigger question, besides the details of the classified documents - and by the way, this is different than Mike Pence, it's different than Hillary Clinton, it's different than Joe Biden having documents in his garage. They were all vice presidents, and in the case of Senator Biden - Senator Hillary Clinton, she was not. But the president does have the authority to declassify. So there's a lot of nuances, technically speaking.
But a bigger picture that I think we're all looking at is, is this an example of political lawfare? Is it a witch hunt? Is it something that, you know, the other party is doing to the Republican Party? And I think those are the questions that people want to answer. We want justice to be served. Everyone wants that to happen. But we also don't want a Banana Republic where you have political lawfare. And I think that's what we're all going to be watching as we read the report...
PFEIFFER: This is a giant issue that we will continue to cover throughout the day, this breaking news, and maybe we can have you on later to talk about that. I also want to make sure I talk to you about the Secret Service, because your subcommittee oversees that agency. Seeing what you saw this weekend, a man with a gun on the roof able to injure a former president, what are your questions, the top of mind for you about what you'd like to know about how that event was handled?
PFLUGER: Well, we're going to be having a call later with director Cheatle. We do have a lot of questions. Our committee, the Homeland Security Committee, was formed to prevent acts of either terrorism on our own soil. We have jurisdiction over the United States Secret Service - and by the way, agents every single day willing to put their lives on the line. So this is going to be a bigger picture of, what was the planning failure? Why was this roof line not protected? Defense 101 tells you that whatever the defended asset is - in this case, President Trump, speaking - needs to be protected from any direct line of sight high ground. And that's exactly what happened.
Was it an operational level failure of planning? Were there communication gaps? Is there something deeper within the Secret Service where they don't have the right people? Were there temporary fill-ins that weren't part of the team? Did you have state and federal agents who didn't know about and they were worried about fratricide? A lot of questions to ask, but obviously a gigantic failure in protecting President Trump. And we are so lucky that, I mean, literally by the turn of his head that he was not fatally injured.
PFEIFFER: In about 30 seconds we have left with you, what's your own level of concern that this might be ushering in a even more worrisome moment in politics to come?
PFLUGER: Well, what I hope is that we see a toning down of the rhetoric on both sides. And that's important. I don't know that it's going to usher in a new level of hatefulness. I think, actually, that hate leads to violence. We need to tone it down. We're hoping to see that from President Biden right now. He is the president in charge. He is the president at the time, and we want to see that from him, to stop saying things like democracy will end if President Trump is elected. That's just false. It's categorically false. All of us need to come together. We need to say, look, the system is going to work it out. We're going to elect the best person to get us in a strong position as the country, and that's what we're hoping to see. And I appreciate you having me on for this.
PFEIFFER: That is Texas Republican Congressman August Pfluger. Thank you for your time.
PFLUGER: Thank you so much.
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