It has been a month since the Trump assassination attempt and STILL, nothing seems to add up: Trump’s Secret Service bodyguards weren’t big enough to protect him, he was denied more security despite an Iranian threat, it was his first rally with snipers … and the government isn’t being transparent with us. Basically, it’s "conspiracy theory central." So, how are we supposed to process all this information with a government we don’t trust? Glenn speaks with investigative journalist and “Case Closed” author Gerald Posner about what the feds should have learned from the Kennedy and MLK Jr. assassinations. Plus, he discusses why he believes another big revelation about the Secret Service is about to drop.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Gerald Posner is an investigative journalist. Pulitzer finalist. He's the author of 13 best-selling books. Including Mengele. Case-closed. Why America slept.

God's bankers. Pharma.

And what was the one you were mentioning, Stu?

PAT: Hitler's children.

GLENN: Yeah. Hitler's children. Gerald, welcome to the program. How are you, sir?

GERALD: Glenn, great to be with you. You know, and I listened to your lead-in when you said, what is the Secret Service doing about the hundreds of groups and the tens of thousands of radical and extreme demonstrators in front of the building? You know, one of the things I worry about that the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump, which exposed sort of how the paper tiger of the Secret Service, how they were not the James Bonds of the world. That they had been -- we've been led to believe in some ways. Might encourage, a copycat. Might encourage somebody else, who is on the edge, to realize, that the -- the system is -- is vulnerable.

And -- and vulnerable is -- with a capital V.

GLENN: So, Gerald, you've looked at the -- the Kennedy case. Martin Luther King. You've studied that for years and years to do Case Closed.

And very, very thorough. When you look back, there were so many conspiracy theories, on that.

And that's because, there were some things that just didn't seem right at the time, like Oswald being shot right after.

This is conspiracy central.

Because everything, the government is doing.

Everything that the Secret Service is doing.

The FBI is -- not normal.

And if you don't want conspiracy theories, they're acting exactly the wrong way.

And so I don't know what's fact, and what's theory. I don't know how to process this with a government that you don't trust.

GERALD: Yeah, you're exactly right. You hit the nail on the head. The government in this case, is not only, you know, hiding the information from the American public. From -- from investigators. From researchers. We're getting some members in Congress, who are getting whistle-blowers, who are coming forward.

That's not the way to get information, on when the former president of the United States, came within an inch of being killed.

They should have learned from the Kennedy assassination. They should have learned from the Kennedy assassination, cover-ups do not work well. And it doesn't have to be the cover-up of a murder. It's just a cover-up of a truth.

They hide things. Keep documents back. They have communications here, that they say they didn't hold on to.

There is a whole series of things.

And, Glenn, we became accustomed over time. For things, whether it was 9/11.

Or whether it was a cat five hurricane that came in. Or earthquake.

The government has these around the clock news conferences. In which people from FEMA and the FBI. Whatever else. They hold the conferences. If the investigators can't say something, because it's under investigation. They'll say, I'm sorry. I can't comment on that now. But here's what I can tell you. Here they went to asylum. They didn't say anything at all.

You know, not until we saw the former, you know, disgraced Secret Service director get subpoenaed before Congress, or she wouldn't have even been there.

And then stonewalled on that day. No wonder people are skeptical about what happened.

And one last thing, I think you hit a key thing when you said the Kennedy and King assassinations, which I have studied.

One of the things that they have in common with this assassination attempt on Donald Trump, which raises questions from the get-go, is you have a shooter with a rifle, shooting from a long distance. In most assassinations, we're accustomed to somebody running up to the person they want to kill like Sirhan Sirhan on Bobby Kennedy, or when Wallace was shot by Bremer. Or Ronald Reagan is shot by Hinckley. We know who the shooter is.

That doesn't answer the question as to whether that was a conspiracy, did they do it with somebody else, or were they egged on?

You know the person with a gun here. You have a shot from like a distance with a rifle. Which immediately conjures up all the ideas for people. The Day of the Jackal, some hired assassin. Something more to it. So I think that that adds to the overall conspiracy speculation from moment one.

GLENN: Sure.

So we also know now that two days before they said they were going to increase Donald Trump's protection, because they had stumbled upon a plot to kill him, through a Pakistani with ties to Iran who was supposed to set it up and then leave before the assassination. And they arrested him, at the airport.

The day before the assassination. But then we find out, not only did they not increase, they actually decreased from four snipers to two.

GERALD: Yeah, amazing.

It is the type of stuff that leaves you just shaking your head, saying that can't be true. And we now know that was the first time in the Trump campaign, that there were snipers at a rally. So before that be with the Secret Service hasn't even provided the snipers. Imagine if this assassination attempt had been successful, and the snipers who weren't there. Who people would be. We would be asking for people to go to jail. And you're right about, they've had a trek from a terror state, that they know, they understand somebody is trying to kill the former president. They still have not upgraded the security to be as great as would be, the sitting president. They actually cut it down.

We now know for two years, before this. When the Trump campaign was asking for additional security for different events. They were turned down repeatedly. Something the Secret Service had first denied. And then had to admit, when four whistle-blowers told that to the Washington Post. Washington Post, no friend to Donald Trump. They even reported that. And so here's a case in which we have them doing less security, not providing it. Not notwithstanding the fact, that there was a foreign threat to the president as well.

GLENN: So what does your gut tell you?

GERALD: My gut tells me, that we're going to find, I think at the very least.

Like we did with Peter Strzok, and the FBI. When they were doing the -- you know, the fake investigation about Russia.

The Russian dossier.

And they were to have had emails. Lisa Page. That says, I can't stand that guy Trump.

And he shows all of his bias. I would be very surprised, if we do not get emails, maybe official emails. But then on government servers or private emails in eventual government investigations if the Republicans take the House, keep the House, in November.

We will have those inquires. And with senior Secret Service members. Or maybe even those operational details for some of the rallies that Donald Trump was at. Are saying, very, very bad things about the former president.

And that is going to call into question. We think of the Secret Service as being apolitical. It doesn't mean you don't have a feeling about who you vote for. You go to the election ballot. And you cast the ballot, but you're protecting everybody.

You're giving up your life for the candidate that you're protecting, and if we start to think that they had tipped the scale because they didn't like the person they were supposed to protect.

And they may have been lax, to allow somebody like a Crooks, the 20-year-old shooter to get off a shot. Then it will call a real ruckus.

GLENN: You know, Gerald, has it always been like this know. And I've just been naive?

I mean, I've always looked up to Secret Service guys. I've seen them protect dirtbags.

And, you know, know that some of those guys don't like these guys.

And I mean foreign dirtbags.

Not just American.

And they would risk their life for these guys.

And I've always looked up to them.

And I don't know.

Is this new? Or has it always been this way?

GERALD: No. I think. And you see this very, very well, when you report on this as well.

How polarized we are, as a country.

And it -- it seems to me, that that has impacted the bureaucracy in many ways.

We talk about the politicization of the FBI.

And if we think of that as the CIA intelligence services, the State Department. Why shouldn't we be surprised? It's not as though, there wasn't a wall up in Canada and a virus from going over to Secret Service.

But I do think, to what you said, that most of the agents. The vast majority of the agents in the field. What I call the close protection.

Those who are responsible for actually throwing themselves, on top of a candidate. They hear gunshots.

Those agents who were close to the stage.

And they -- and they are putting themselves, in the mind of a bullet. For all they know.

Now, one of the things we all said, Glenn. When we saw that payout. Was it was very visible.

That when they lifted, you know, the president gets back on his feet. And they start to move a cauldron around him. Back in the car. They have that circle around him. Close protective circle. They don't know if it's a second shooter. If it's a shooter who originally had gotten off the shots is still active

GLENN: Correct.

GERALD: And we see two of the agents, who are a full head shorter than the president.

The old way of doing it, was if you assigned Secret Service agents for the close protection, who at least were the same size as the candidate, you were covering.

So that if you tried to get the candidate out of there, and somebody is shooting, they will hit an agent. Not the candidate.

GLENN: Right.

GERALD: If the former president was being moved out from butler. From that rally. After that failed shot.

And then was then killed by a second shooter, because the agents were too short.

Could you imagine what we would be doing in this country?

It would be -- it would -- it would turn things upside down?

GLENN: I think that day. I mean, you saw it.

I saw it, right after it happened.

And it just -- just clipped his ear. Because he moved.

If he wouldn't have moved. It would have been John F. Kennedy, live on television. I think that could have put us in Civil War.

GERALD: You're right. And I tell you, we now know, which we didn't at that time.

That now we saw the videos.

One of the great things from the Kennedy or King assassination. People have what you expect. Cell phone videos. They're taking the rally. They're there.

And what's amazing, is that 140 yards away from the stage, where Donald Trump is taking the stage at 6:00 p.m. and then speaking.

Are a group of people, you know, regular rally goers, going out that day, saying. Hey, there he is. He's rolling over. Hey, officer. Hey, officer.

GLENN: It's crazy.

GERALD: And you have to put yourself for half a second into the shooter, the 20-year-old kid who has practiced a lot at the range. He has this deranged idea, that he will kill the former president. But he is expecting, he has found his spot. You know, he wants to get to the top. He has his range finder, he tried to get through the perimeter. They turned him away.

He's climbed on to the roof of the building. He's managed to get his gun up there, and he's ready to try to pull off this assassination.

And now he gets spotted for this minute and a half, two minutes beforehand. People are yelling.
He can hear that clearly. They're down there. They're calling him out there, pointing to him. So that has to add some adrenaline to the whole mix.

And then a police officer, gets to the top of the roof. Right?

Right before he starts to fire. He looks over at that officer, drops down. But it had to rush the shooting a little bit. He had to be under the pressure of knowing, closing in on him.

And so we talk about, you know, the difference between getting off that shot, and it hits the former president. And kills him.

Or not.

Could also be those moments of chaos, that are planing out of the stage. That just made a difference.

GLENN: Yeah. You wrote an article, right after the shooting. The forgotten lessons of Dallas 63 and Memphis 68.

And I just want to go through with you.

So this is something that I've talked about for a long time. It's one thing to say, these tactics are very much what's happening in the Third Reich. But when you have convinced half the population, that this one individual is Hitler, is it's the end of the republic. And he has to -- I'm quoting. Has to be stopped, at all costs.

You're creating this atmosphere. Are you not?

GERALD: Bingo. You're absolutely right. And you have been talking about it for a while.

And I was just startled, you call somebody the coming of Hitler.

They will be the next Hitler. Long enough.

And you will set sort of an atmosphere in which somebody, who is already unstable. A little bit on the edge.

Is going to try to take it on their own hands. To be the hero. To stop that next Hitler from coming into office.

And I will tell you, this wasn't just. You talk about the radical extremists, who are gathering around the convention. And gathering around.

It wasn't just for the French. These were people who were from the campaign. The Biden campaign. And Washington Post had an article, by this guy Mike Godwin. He said, it's okay to compare Trump to Hitler. You know, Joy Reid of MSNBC was putting up videos saying, oh, by the way, let me know how to vote to keep Hitler out of the White House.

The New Republic had a cover story, in which they had a Hitler campaign poster, and it was made to look like -- to Trump. And Politico -- no friend of Donald Trump, often, had had an article, last December, saying it's really unusual, to compare a political opponent to Adolf Hitler. But for Joe Biden's campaign. It's part of the routine for running against Donald Trump.

GLENN: Yeah. Right.

GERALD: And now, of course, once the shock takes place in butler. The near death of the president. For the most part. At least at the leadership levels. In that they stopped Hitler.

They already set the fire.

GLENN: Yeah.

Gerald, I would love to stay in touch with you. As this inquiry continues to go on.

Because there seems to be new things coming out every day. That nobody is coming.

And, you know, this is bad for Joe Biden.

It's bad for Donald Trump. It's bad for Kamala. This is bad for America.

We have to be able to trust our Secret Service.

And know that they are on the up and up. Gerald Posner. Thank you so much. God bless.