During a field hearing on the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump on Monday, former Navy SEAL and Blackwater founder Erik Prince provided detailed analysis on security failures that were evident during and in the lead up to the assassination attempt.

U.S. Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) — a former SEAL Team sniper who did multiple combat tours in Iraq — began by asking Mr. Prince about his company’s record.

After leaving the SEAL Teams, Prince founded Blackwater initially as a training company for law enforcement and military units. Upon the outbreak of the war on terror, Blackwater shifted to providing security for diplomats and other high-profile protectees in active war zones. A total of 41 Blackwater contractors — the majority of whom were U.S. special forces veterans — were killed in action during the Iraq war.

Blackwater has the distinction of having never lost a protectee.

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During Monday’s hearing, Rep. Crane asked Prince whether he believes the Secret Service can counter a more serious threat in its current state. “You said something interesting on an episode of Sean Ryan that I saw a couple weeks ago. You said, thank God it was a 20-year-old kid and not a 10-man Hezbollah team. Can you expound on that a little bit?” Crane asked.

“Sure, because the fact that a 20-year-old kid could get his drone in the air, could get himself into a firing position only 140 yards away. 140 yards is point-blank range. My then 12-year-old son could have made that shot. And thank God that 20-year-old aimed at a headshot at President Trump. Because if he’d aimed center mass, President Trump would probably be dead,” Prince replied, noting that the former president was not wearing any protective armor at the time.

“A Hezbollah team or ISIS or you name the terrorist organization that actually knows what they’re doing would have been successful that day. And the Secret Service was nearly defeated by a 20 year old and we all, including Donald Trump, literally dodged a bullet that day,” Prince added.

“So I want to double down on that real quick. In your opinion, in your professional opinion, is the Secret Service in its current form and leadership able to stop a threat like that?” Crane followed up.

“President Trump was definitely deprived of resources that day for whatever their political reason. They had one third the amount of agents covering him as we’re covering Jill Biden in the same region at an indoor event. She had 12 post-holders covering her Again, no statutory or constitutional authority for the first lady,” the Blackwater founder answered.

Prince went on to list a number of security failures evident during the lead up to and actual day of the Butler, Pennsylvania rally, including the fact that Secret Service agents left the rooftop uncovered, failed to sync up with local law enforcement radios, and overall lack of communication.

“To even when shots were fired, the clumsy, unprofessional way of getting the protectee off the X, there was catastrophic failure across the entire enterprise.”

Elsewhere in the hearing, Prince pointed to waste and unchecked incompetence that permeates the entire federal government.

“We’re here today to discuss a tragedy for the United States of America that could have been the catalyst in the destruction of our republic. World War I started with botched diplomatic security. The assassination of one party’s leading candidate a mere four months before the election, at minimum, would have unleashed unimaginable chaos and violence,” Prince told lawmakers.

“The cancerous rot of unaccountability has metastasized throughout our entire body politic. Our obscene levels of government waste ooze like a gelatinous mold across society. Our borders, so porous they are reminiscent of a spring flood tide. The security apparatus suffers failure upon failure globally. Our enemies mocking us even while the permanent deep state has weaponized the justice system and delivers a Soviet style of lawfare. In the case of Butler, Pennsylvania, only the disinfectant of transparency and accountability will start to repair the cascading errors that led to the tragedy.”

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A heated interview between MSNBC host Ari Melber and Corey Lewandowski ended with shouting and threats of a lawsuit after the Trump advisor read the liberal host’s own criticisms of the former president back to him.

Video of the exchange circulating online shows a flustered Melber demanding that Lewandowski immediately refrain from committing “defamation” by reading a quote from a prior appearance where the MSNBC host called the bandage from former President Donald Trump’s near-assassination a “spectacle.” Melber, an attorney who has been on-camera with the network since 2017, lost it after his Republican guest called him out for suggesting that President Trump was milking sympathy following the July 13th shooting. The interview was originally meant to allow Lewandowski to respond to criticisms about a recent “improper request” by Trump.

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Citing a new Fox News report, Melber claimed the network “ran a story falsely suggesting I said something that I didn’t say,” waving his hands for effect. “So I stand on that, I stand on the New York Times quote” which characterized his remark differently. Lewandowski was incredulous. “So you didn’t say ‘this bandage was a prop, a spectacle, from a candidate who is obsessed with spectacles,’” he asked. “I did not,” Melber repeated. Video shared by popular X influencer Collin Rugg showed otherwise.

During MSNBC’s coverage of the Republican National Convention in July, Melber spoke about delegates on the floor who showed their solidarity with Trump by wearing their own ear bandages during the event. “A placard for delegates to fill in, an image for political mobilization, a spectacle for this candidate who we know is, by his own admission, obsessed with assorted spectacles,” Melber said at the time. The video cuts back to the host who then goes nuclear before ending the interview.

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“Mr. Lewandowski, I did not say that. That is a false quote. What you have is a false quote, and if you… I’m putting you on notice. If you continue to repeat falsely that I said that, you will be potentially in a defamation situation because I didn’t say that. I understand you’re working off the internet, which has a lot of false information,” he threatened. “This is what it says right here!” the Trump advisor continued before Melber cut him off. “Corey Lewandowski, we gave you time. Thank you for joining me.” Lewandowski took a parting shot. “You owe the president an apology for that.”

Just days after the former president narrowly avoided death in a brazen assassination attempt, Democratic voters and mainstream media voices criticized his use of a gauzy bandage to cover up the bloody wound on his ear. “We still don’t know what is the actual injury to Donald Trump’s ear that’s under that bandage,” said MSNBC host Joy Reid in a selfie video at the time where she suggested he was not struck by a bullet. An FBI investigation of the shooting confirmed unequivocally that Trump was hit by a round from an AR-15 assault rifle. One Democratic voter claimed the shooting “almost looked real” in a man-on-the-street interview while disgraced former news anchor Keith Olbermann went full tilt. “Trump’s dream comes true! He actually gets one of his cultists to try to kill without telling them to kill and thus making himself culpable,” he said in a social media video.

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Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) — who is assisting with  a bipartisan Senate investigation into the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump — told Fox News that the FBI and Secret Service are “slow walking” the investigation.

“All I can really tell you is the Secret Service and the FBI are basically dragging their feet. They’re stonewalling us,” Johnson told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo.

“We’ve gotten some transcribed interviews, but the documents we request are heavily redacted. They’re delivered you know, the day of the interview, so we really can’t use the documents to conduct the interviews effectively. So, we’re not getting squat from my standpoint from the Secret Service or FBI,” he continued. “We’ve requested all of their 302’s, their transcriptions of their interviews with hundreds of individuals. They’re not turning those over to us as well.”

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The lack of transparency, Johnson continued, is only adding to suspicion surrounding the attempt on Trump’s life, which killed retired firefighter Corey Comperatore as he shielded his family from gunfire. The Wisconsin senator described the FBI’s decision to cremate would-be Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks’ body before any autopsy or toxicology reports could be done as “jaw-dropping.”

“Again, it’s just driving suspicion and conspiracy theories,” Johnson said.

On Monday, several members of the U.S. House of Representatives gathered for a field hearing on the assassination attempt and the status of the investigation. Members who participated in the hearing — including U.S. Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Eli Crane (R-AZ), Cory Mills (R-FL) Matt Gates (R-FL) and Chip Roy (R-TX) — raised similar concerns to those raised by Johnson.

Rep. Roy listed a number of irregularities surrounding the investigation that have been chalked up to “incompetence” on the part of law enforcement personnel before asking a panel of experts if they found it unusual. Lawmakers heard testimony from former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino, Blackwater founder Erik Prince and SWAT counter-sniper Ben Shaffer, who was working in Butler, Pennsylvania during the assassination attempt.

Roy began by noting that Crooks fired from a building located outside the building. “Do you believe that you can just chalk up to mere incompetence,that the Secret Service did not attend the nine o’clock meeting for scheduling purposes? They literally just didn’t attend.”

Local law enforcement personnel have stated that the Secret Service did not attend a pre-event briefing and ultimately left the roof of the AGR building uncovered due to the heat. They also were not synced up with local law enforcement on radio channels, leading to a delay when a local officer confronted Crooks.

“Can you chalk it up to mere incompetence that they identified crooks about an hour ahead of time and that the President, President Trump, was never removed from the stage, they didn’t delay, they didn’t hold him back, they didn’t remove him from the potential danger,” Roy continued. “That the perimeter did not include the buildings around over here and to the extent, should there have been a perimeter that was farther out and the extent that the perimeter wasn’t farther out, that they at least make sure the building wasn’t covered. Is that just incompetence? Is it just incompetence that there was no drone being flown and the drone was turned down by the Secret Service? Was it just incompetence that the shooter had a drone, as the FBI director testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee, that he literally had flying within a couple hundred feet of the stage the same day mere hours before the shooting?”

Bongino agreed that the security failures are seemingly too “apocalyptic” to be chalked up to mere incompetence alone.

The full exchange can be viewed below.

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Former Secret Service agent turned conservative commentator Dan Bongino tore into his former agency during a recent congressional hearing where he faulted leadership for failing to heed previous warnings that a lack of technology and institutional fortitude was putting the lives of presidents and presidential candidates at risk.

The hearing, convened by a bipartisan committee of U.S. House members probing the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, hopes to shed light on how a deranged 20-year-old gunman was able to position himself on a roof just hundreds of yards away from where Trump was speaking at a July 13th rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Investigations by lawmakers and the FBI have determined a number of shortcomings, some of which involve the Secret Service’s obstinance to adopt modern techniques to combat threatening individuals. “The joke in the Secret Service, which is sadly no longer funny when I was there, and it wasn’t funny then either, is they rely on yesterday’s technology tomorrow,” Bongino stated during a five-minute testimony.

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“Everything from computer systems that waste agents’ times filling out time and attendance records they were doing” and “implementing slings – a technology as old as the wheel – about… five or six years into my time in the Secret Service,” he continued, a delay he called “embarrassing.” In addition, “the weaponry was old. Everything was old. These are things I would’ve talked about sooner if they didn’t create a security crisis.” Another lapse was the lack of a drone at the rally to monitor crowd interactions and scan for suspicious individuals. “Now you’re seeing what happens when you don’t have a drone up at a site you could’ve bought for $39.99 on Amazon,” he quipped.

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Robert Rowe, the Secret Service’s acting director who assumed office after the resignation of former director Kimberly Cheatle, has told the committee that he oversees an agency that is expected to do “more with less.” That isn’t a realistic expectation, Bongino explained. “There isn’t more with less, there is less with less. The Secret Service more-with-less approach only works if you produce more.” Comparing his former agency to a television producer that now sells yesterday’s products for a fraction of the price today, Bongino said the Service “was given more money, and produced less.” Over the past 10 years, the agency’s budget has ballooned from $2.34 billion in 2014 to $3.62 billion in 2024, according to small government advocate Downsizing Government. “A 20-year-old criminal outsmarted them on a drone technology piece of device. You’re telling me that’s more with less? That’s disgusting,” Bongino seethed at lawmakers. “That’s less with more.”

Bongino said a third and final area of agency shortcomings is the prioritization of agents’ missions on the job. “Their agents are talented, smart people. They can figure out how to do protection without running down cheap $20 counterfeit notes at 7-Eleven on a Friday night while the president is getting shot in the head.”

Bongino, a former New York police officer, served in the Secret Service from 1999 to 2011 before running three unsuccessful campaigns for Congress. Since then, he has elevated himself through an online platform where he tackles some of the federal government’s most pressing security issues as well as news of the day from a conservative point of view. After additional footage of the Butler rally emerged online, Bongino asked his audience how Secret Service counter-snipers might have been able to miss an obvious threat to the president’s right. “This is a cell phone camera! This is not a zoom, high, telephoto, freaking lens used to film a Marvel movie! It’s a cellphone! You can see the guy clear as day! How did they miss this?!” Bongino said two weeks after the shooting. He claimed that the agency is asking Americans to “believe the implausible” about just how impossible it was to try and stop Crooks from firing the first round.

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The father of Trump shooter Thomas Crooks is lawyering up as the FBI probe expands into what his family knew and when following the July 13th assassination attempt.

The Daily Mail reports that Matthew Crooks, 53, and his wife have hired powerhouse Pittsburgh law firm Quinn Logue as it prepares to answer pointed questions from the Bureau about how the 20-year-old gunman was able to evade online dragnets searching for individuals suspected of taking future violent action against former President Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden, and former presidents and presidential candidates. Matthew and his wife Mary, 53, will benefit from attorneys specializing in criminal defense and civil suits including wrongful death and personal injury. A family member told the outlet, “The FBI still very much has questions about how much they knew and how he [Thomas] slipped through the net.”

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Ongoing investigations into Thomas Crooks took on new urgency last week when Congressman Mike Waltz (R-FL) suggested that Thomas Crooks may not have acted alone. The Florida Republican hazarded a guess based on classified briefings he was privy to as part of a bipartisan U.S. House committee aiding the FBI in its investigation. “I don’t understand, and I don’t have any answers yet to help me understand how the [Secret] Service and DHS came out so quickly and said – and I think the FBI as well, but I’ll have to check that – and said, he operated alone,” Waltz said last week “How do you know that mere days into your investigation? You can’t tell us his motive, but you could tell us he operated alone? You can’t get into these encrypted overseas accounts, but you can tell us he acted alone? So, I don’t buy that yet.”

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The hammer has come down on five U.S. Secret Service agents within the 60-member detail around former President Donald Trump, according to sources who say that five have been suspended more than a month after an assassination attempt that nearly killed former President Donald Trump.

RealClearPolitics has been reporting on developments within the Secret Service as turmoil rocks its upper echelons. Presidential details are among the most prestigious — and stressful — positions that agents can attain during their careers, but since the July 13th shooting the service has been beset by attention drawn to further security failures and agent misconduct. Earlier this month a bipartisan committee of U.S. House members undertook a comprehensive review of personnel and procedures, and Friday’s development appears to come in response to pressure on Acting Director Robert Rowe to deliver consequences.

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The separate sources confirmed that multiple agents in the Secret Service’s Pittsburgh Field Office have been placed on leave, the outlet reported, underscoring the urgency felt by Rowe to assure lawmakers he is in control since the resignation of former director Kimberly Cheatle. Among federal employees, administrative leave is designated when an employee temporarily leaves their position and work duties – either because of a misconduct investigation or medical or mental health issues. Pay and benefits are usually continued, though that is at the discretion of senior officials. Another set of agents has taken over their responsibilities protecting President Trump even though they too were involved in organizing security for the deadly rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The divergent outcomes for each set of agents have spurred consternation within the ranks as Secret Service men and women remain rankled about who is most to blame. The FBI, which is conducting its own investigation, previously reported that the Secret Service failed to maintain clear lines of communication with local authorities they tasked to secure the perimeter of the Trump rally where a gunman was able to scale a warehouse roof and fire a high-powered rifle. During a July 30th congressional hearing, Rowe said he could not understand why Cheatle or agents organizing the event left the rooftop unguarded.

Sources told the outlet that lower-level agents are right to be angry that Rowe has so far been spared the brunt of culpability for the shooting, even though other reports indicated that he was directly involved in denying previous requests from Trump’s team to enhance his protection detail. At the time, counterintelligence officials had reported that Iran was plotting its own assassination attempt against the former president which spurred the requests. Internal emails showed one agent predicting that, without serious reforms at the Secret Service, another attack on Trump’s life before the November elections is “imminent.”

Several other security lapses have occurred since the shooting. At last month’s national Bitcoin conference in Nashville, two credentialed attendees made their way around metal detectors, forcing the Secret Service to keep President Trump backstage while the individuals were apprehended and escorted from the premises. One female agent at Mar-a-Lago was reprimanded for posting compromising pictures to her social media accounts while on duty. Another female agent was found breastfeeding with a child and other family members after leaving her post unannounced.

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Republican Congressman Mike Waltz (R-FL), who has been briefed on the investigation into the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, said he has reason to believe that 20-year-old Thomas Crooks may not have been the only threat present that day.

Probes by the FBI, Secret Service, and a bipartisan U.S. House committee have delved into the past of Crooks, a recent high school graduate whose friends and former classmates say was deeply skeptical about the American political system. Though he was a registered Republican, Crooks most recently made a small donation to a progressive group supporting President Joe Biden’s then-campaign for reelection. Rep. Waltz is among 12 lawmakers on the House committee receiving classified briefings as the search for a motive continues, and he said he has reason to believe that Crooks didn’t act alone.

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“I don’t understand, and I don’t have any answers yet to help me understand how the [Secret] Service and DHS came out so quickly and said – and I think the FBI as well, but I’ll have to check that – and said, he operated alone,” Waltz said when speaking with the Daily Mail at Trump Tower in Chicago on Wednesday. “How do you know that mere days into your investigation? You can’t tell us his motive, but you could tell us he operated alone? You can’t get into these encrypted overseas accounts, but you can tell us he acted alone? So, I don’t buy that yet.”

Crooks was shot and killed by a counter-sniper after opening fire at the July 13th rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, narrowly missing a kill shot fired from his high-powered AR-15 scoped rifle. Investigators located an explosives-laced vehicle near the site of the rally and a remote detonator on Crooks’s body, leading authorities to believe he planned to detonate his vehicle as part of a distraction attempt. Further developments have led them to believe that a last-second encounter with a local officer led Crooks to rush his plan for a perfect shot.

“I don’t know of many 19-year-old kids who could make multiple IEDs with a remote detonator on their own,” Waltz continued. “Why didn’t that get picked up if he’s searching that online or buying literature on how to do that? The more we get into it, the more questions I have.”

The Florida lawmaker said he would soon partake in another classified briefing with the FBI. However, he expressed skepticism that it would lead to further answers about how Crooks was able to supposedly act alone. Shortly after the attack, reports surfaced that Iran was plotting an assassination attempt against President Trump, a fact that may not be unrelated to Crooks. “It’s really what’s coming out around it that is so disturbing,” Waltz said. “And for me, the thing that’s most disturbing is that we have ongoing plots from Iran to take out a former president, leading candidate, and that a Pakistani national was just arrested after making a down payment for hitmen, and it’s barely even being covered in the news.”

Multiple failures by the Secret Service that day have been chronicled, leading to an onslaught of revelations about the deteriorating circumstances in the former president’s protection detail. At various times over the past several months, the Secret Service rebuffed requests to enhance Trump’s security measures, and officers were found to be posting compromising social media pictures or walking away from posts unannounced. Other agents have been furious with their colleagues’ lackadaisical attitude to their jobs and predicted another attempt on Trump’s life is “imminent.

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Conservative Congressman Clay Higgins (R-LA) is exposing the FBI for quietly releasing the body of Trump shooter Thomas Crooks for a private cremation by his family just days after the event. He added that the Bureau actively impeded his investigation into whether a post-shooting autopsy report about how Crooks died was accurate.

The Louisiana Republican provided his update in a letter to a bipartisan committee examining the July 13th assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump. In it, he writes about his intent to examine the body and ensure an autopsy and coroner’s report were fully accurate. “We will actually never know. Yes, we’ll get the reports and pictures, etc, but I will not ever be able to say with certainty that those reports and pictures are accurate according to my own examination of the body,” he tells the committee, according to the New York Post.

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“The FBI cleaned up biological evidence from the crime scene, which is unheard of,” Higgins wrote. “Cops don’t do that, ever. I interviewed several First Responders who expressed everything from surprise to dismay to suspicion regarding the fact that the FBI released the crime scene so early after J13,” Higgins said “It should be noted that the FBI was fully aware of the fact that Congress would be investigating J13. The FBI does not exist in a vacuum. They had to know that releasing the J13 crime scene would injure the immediate observations of any following investigation. “

Rep. Higgins told committee members he found it “disturbing” that Crooks was able to position himself just hundreds of yards from the stage where President Trump stood, out of sight from Secret Service counter-snipers. The security failures in the perimeter of the rally have led to the resignation of former agency director Kimberly Cheatle and prompted renewed scrutiny of the embattled 60-member team around the former president. Higgins writes that Crooks had “perfectly positioned himself (on the roof) to minimize the threat of counter-fire from the ground or the US Secret Service counter-sniper teams.” He “effectively minimized the sky-lined profile of his head and upper body,” the congressman added.

According to reports from that day, Crooks was able to fire off up to eight shots from an AR-15 rifle he had stolen from his parents’ home before counter-snipers shot and killed him. “The 10th (and, I believe, final) shot was fired from the USSS southern counter-sniper team,” the report stated. “Which, according to my investigation, entered somewhere around the left mouth area and exited the right ear area.” The first bullet fired by Crooks struck Trump’s right ear, and subsequent rounds killed Trump supporter Corey Comperatore and severely injured two others.

Earlier this week sources within the Secret Service disclosed that multiple security failures around President Trump have taken place since the July 13th rally. A female agent was reprimanded for going off duty unannounced to breastfeed her child, and weeks earlier another agent was found to be posting sensitive social media pictures that compromised the former president’s locations. In internal emails, another agent ripped his colleagues for their lackadaisical behavior on the job and said another attempt on Trump’s life is “imminent.”

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Security lapses, improper fraternization, backbiting, and sleeping on the job are among the problems plaguing a dysfunctional Secret Service protection detail around former President Trump, according to a new report.

A top-down review of the 60-member team by agency brass is zeroing in on missteps by a particular agent who helped formulate the protective measures around Trump on the day of an assassination attempt that nearly took his life. According to RealClearPolitics, Secret Service leadership has uncovered that the individual has been compromising the Republican’s security by posting otherwise innocuous messages on social media that it says compromised Trump’s whereabouts. The revelation comes as part of an internal review that lays bare a broken system that failed the former president on July 13th.

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An RCP analysis of the agent’s Facebook history shows images of what appears to be Mar-a-Lago and a Florida sunset. The agent wrote, “A sunset to be grateful for …” adding heart and sunset emojis and the hashtags “#nofilter #southflorida #thankful #workmode …”. Sources told the outlet that most of the agent’s messages, including some with videos, were posted to her Instagram account, which was private. The agent is believed to be among the least experienced within President Trump’s detail for staging the July 13th rally, and some sources fear that Acting Director Robert Rowe will fire them for the social media posts rather than the critical security lapses that occurred that day. The individual had decades of agency experience, the outlet added, but virtually none within the innermost protective ring around current and former presidents.

Sources explained that the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania served as a wake-up call to their colleagues. “Some agents have referred to it as their 9/11 moment where people are opting back onto the detail,” a Secret Service source said. “Morale is high, people are motivated. These agents [protecting Trump] are stiff-jawed with steel in their spine.”

In the lead-up to the Butler rally, the agent compromising themself on social media was responsible for helping formulate an overall plan for the perimeter of the rally where the gunman positioned himself, however, they were mostly focused on the perimeter. She joined the force’s lead site agent while they conducted walkthroughs of security with supervisors; the lead is typically the agent who manages all aspects of a president’s event from touchdown of their aircraft to putting him back on the road or into the sky.

Signs of corrosion within Trump’s detail were plainly evident before Butler, sources added. On May 15th, the two agents in charge of President Trump’s 60-member team dressed everyone down in a virtual meeting where they cited instances of “rumors, innuendo and toxicity” among the detail, as well as “selfishness and immaturity.” Lead agent Sean Curran and his deputy Matthew Piant reminded their team that they had refrained from recommending punishment to any members by higher leadership, even for childish pranks that were compromising Trump’s safety. Among them: the sharing of photographs showing Mar-a-Lago agents sleeping on the job. Piant accused the responsible agents of “humor and gossip” at the expense of professionalism and that they should have simply nudged their colleagues awake.

The pranks, Piant added, amounted to a “lack of basic human decency” that was drawing attention from Secret Service leadership “at the highest levels.” Ultimately, no one was referred for punishment and, to the knowledge of sources, the agents who fell asleep on their assignments were never formally punished.

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The Trump comeback needs a storyteller, and Tucker Carlson plans to play that role.

On Monday the quixotic conservative journalist released a slickly produced trailer of his upcoming documentary on the campaign to return former President Donald Trump to the White House, packing it with 96 high-speed seconds of admissions from his friends, aerial views, and arenas of fans. Carlson, if anything, is an entertainer who promises to release a compelling narrative about who is supporting the former president this year, and why. Among the scenes: hip-hop fans touting red MAGA caps, cowboys waving ten-gallon hats, and shaky footage of Carlson’s vantage point during the July 13th assassination attempt.

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Asked to describe the momentum he’s seeing, Congressman Byron Donalds (R-FL) said President Trump’s third run for the White House is defined by “execution,” a summary that even Democrats agree is accurate and driven by the tight circle of battle-tested advisors who surround him these days. Many, including spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt and his own children, are intimately familiar with the successes and missteps of his four years in office and two previous campaigns, and they are determined to learn from their mistakes. Speaking with Politico, recently departed Biden advisor Anita Dunn said the discipline of President Trump’s campaign played a significant role in the Democrat’s poor debate performance on July 27th. “The people who are running his campaign this time are very good. … They’re much smarter. They’re running a very competent campaign. We saw that early in this process. And so we had a reasonable expectation that they were going to have a fairly competent rollout and a fairly good convention,” she said on Thursday.

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Carlson, who has been a trusted media figure to Trump for years, promises “unprecedented access” in his latest film, and from the teaser trailer, it certainly appears he will deliver. Titled, “The Art of the Surge: The Donald Trump Comeback,” it is promised for later release on the Tucker Carlson Network, a media service founded by Carlson after spending more than a year on Twitter. He found his footage there after being fired from Fox News in the wake of a devastating lawsuit by Dominion that in part relied on statements the former anchor made regarding their voting machines and their role in the 2020 election. Carlson was essentially welcomed onto the platform by Elon Musk and rode a surge in conservative users who flocked to the site as Musk rebranded it X and promised unfettered free speech.

Though he never left the platform, Carlson teases his 13.4 million followers with limited programming and other enticements to subscribe to his own network at TuckerCarlson.com. If he continues to produce the kinds of feature films that “Art of the Surge” promises to be, he could significantly alter the conservative media landscape and prove his shadow looms larger than ever since parting ways with Fox.

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