The podcast was done from Trump Tower, and it got underway while Trump was still on his way there.  So if you’re short on time, fast-forward to about 32:00, and you’ll see him walk in.  (Don’t worry; they still had plenty of time for the interview.  This wasn’t like Kamala’s deliberately abbreviated 15-minute interview with Bret Baier.  Not Trump’s style.)   By the time Trump arrived, there were close to 300,000 viewers --- a record for the biggest live stream --- waiting to watch him.  While they were waiting, they had seen some solid commentary from Bongino as well as some powerful ads for Trump’s social media platform Truth Social.

“This guy gets it, man,” Bongino said.  “He made the Republican Party edgy again.  We’ve run a bunch of stiffs, and terrible candidates...[who] might have been right on the issues but have been terrible on the message.  You’ve gotta get that right.  I think one of his lasting gifts to the Republican Party is gonna be...his very unique ability to make this party the home for working class voters again.  And I think the greatest irony of all is [that] a very wealthy real estate developer in New York who understands, you know, union workers and everyone else became the guy who transformed the Republican Party back to the party of the working man.”

Bongino had a caution, too: “If we lose, free speech is finished.”  Social media platforms are going to be controlled or shut down.  It’s a global phenomenon; Elon Musk’s platform X is being threatened with bankruptcy over his refusal to toe the line on censoring so-called “misinformation” and “disinformation,” which means information that fails to further the leftist narrative.  The courts will not save us, he said.

Once President Trump was settled in his chair, the first question Bongino had for him was naturally about the Secret Service.  They’d spoken about the Butler assassination attempt the next morning, and Bongino was amazed that “you spoke about it as if you weren’t even there.”  

“...If we get you into office, Mr. President, we need you safe,” he told Trump, asking him if he would commit to having some kind of commission of outside experts to reform the Secret Service.

Trump praised the agents he knew as “amazing” and said “they had a really bad day in Butler.”  (Never mind that he himself almost had a REALLY bad day.)  “I don’t know whose fault that is; I guess you go top level.”  (He confirmed that he hadn’t known the then-director, Kimberly Cheatle at all.)  They’d shown incredible courage, he said, in shielding him as they did.

He also praised the Secret Service for their handling of the second attempt, on his golf course in West Palm Beach.  “That guy should’ve been nowhere near you,” Bongino told him.  But Trump praised the agent who saw the barrel of the gun and reacted.

However, he did agree with Bongino.  “Gotta be safe, gotta be safe.”

Trump had not seen the report that came out over the weekend, which Bongino characterized as “devastating.”  It “confirms a lot of things that I’ve said, being an agent for over a decade of my life,” Bongino said.  It’s part of a larger government attitude that someone like Trump from the private sector --- someone who actually has to get things done --- might not comprehend.

“You have these failed [government] agencies that blew it,” Bongino said.  When he was in the Secret Service, they would joke about “yesterday’s technology today.”  He wanted to know if Trump would perhaps include Elon Musk to do some “systemic wide review” of the FBI, Secret Service and other entities and to say “We’re not doing it this way anymore.”  Produce results or you’re done.

“It’s all about the people,” Trump said.  You have to have the best.  “I know very little about that, although I’ve learned a lot in the last few weeks.”

“There were 107,000 people at that second rally in Butler,” he said, “and the place now has become a sort of “memorial site.”

“...They’re coming from all over the country,” he mused, likening it to “that place in Nevada where they have all the aliens.”  (Yes, he was talking about Area 51 – and probably facitiously!)  “The streets are just loaded with cars.  They ride up and down and they honk.”

“It’s cute.  It’s beautiful, actually.”

Anyway, “something went wrong, and you can’t let it go wrong,” he said, so it will have to be looked into.  He seemed to be taking Bongino up on his offer to spearhead something like that.  “You’d be a good person to look into that...that was your business, right?”

“It’s dangerous,” Trump said lightly.  “I’ll tell you what, being President is a dangerous profession, and you can’t let it go wrong.”  He meant dangerous for anyone who has ever been President, not just himself.  Obviously, he’s been thinking about how many Presidents get shot compared to the small number there have been through our history.

“I never thought of that when I ran,” he said.  “You think everything’s peachy-dory.  But it’s a nasty business.”  He noted the irony that in a way, he got “saved by illegal immigration,” referring to the chart that he turned his head towards at just the right moment.

Trump does wonder why the FBI hasn’t opened the three foreign apps on a phone possessed by the Butler shooter.  He also asks why the second shooter would have six cell phones.  They haven’t opened those, either, Trump said.

“I guarantee they opened them for January 6.”

“They [the shooters] look innocent, like nice country boys, but they may not be, so I’d like to see them open that up and fast.”

Not surprisingly, Bongino said, “I just don’t trust the FBI.”  At this point, we all know the FBI spied on Trump’s campaign.  “I have the names of the spies,” Bongino said.

“They actually spied on my campaign,” Trump said ruefully, “and then went after the people that went after the spies.”

“...And if you look, it was Biden and Obama and their group of people.  And the Deep State, they wanted that forgotten as soon as possible.”  The media wouldn’t cover it, either, and never apologized.

As for the media, Trump cited 60 MINUTES for editing their interview with Kamala Harris to substitute another answer (from “two pages later”) for the one she had given, saying it was “the worst scandal I’ve ever seen in broadcast history.”  The original answer “showed she was crazy.”  He wants 60 MINUTES to release the full video, and that might take a lawsuit.  “I think I’m gonna sue them,” he said.

“It’s so bad, they should lose their license,” he said, “and they should take 60 MINUTES off the air.”  He likened this to the old-style scandal over the show THE $64,000 QUESTION, with the answers given by the producers to a contestant in advance.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110932/

They had a laugh over the ridiculous David Muir, one of ABC’s debate hosts, for questioning everything while letting Kamala prattle on about various debunked hoaxes.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/abc-debate-fact-check-trump-ages-poorly-fbi-quietly-revises-violent-crime-statistics-up

“I don’t know if a country can come back if they have a fake press,” Trump said.  “They’re like policemen; they keep people honest.  Democrats don’t have to be honest, because they’ll never be accused of anything.”

But someone like Eric Adams, who goes against the party on an issue like immigration?  When he did that, Trump predicted he’d be indicted in six months.  And sure enough.

“I know these people.”

They also talked about Jack Smith, “a sick puppy,” and his plans to release another so-called manifesto of unproven allegations before the election, which is blatant election interference.  “I don’t even know what it is,” Trump said.  “It has nothing to do with me.”

“And the judge [Tanya Chutkan] is allowing him to do it,” Trump said.  He called her “an evil person.”

“They all said, ‘Well, make sure you don’t get Chutkan,’” he said.  “And who did I get?  I got Chutkan.”

They also discussed the “Select” Committee supposedly investigating the January 6 riot, the uncorroborated hearsay testimony that eyewitnesses swear never happened, and the committee’s wholesale destruction of records at the time they disbanded.  “You’re supposed to go to jail if you destroy evidence,” Trump said.  “Even in a civil case you go to jail.”

As for the business of Kamala being at DNC headquarters during the “discovery” of the pipe bomb, Trump said, “It’s a rigged deal.  The whole thing is rigged.”  And regarding the political prisoners still being held, “Nobody’s ever been treated like this.  Maybe the Japanese during [the] Second World War, frankly…”

Bongino also mentioned that all messages from that day were wiped from Secret Service phones, hoping that could be investigated, too.

At about 56:00, you’ll just have to see the conversation, as Trump and Bongino banter about lighter stuff: What it’s like to be from Queens, the accomplishments of their wives, the jokes at the Al Smith dinner, the great mayorship of Rudy Giuliani, and other good-natured human things.  And worse things, too, like the humiliating airlift out of Afghanistan.

https://bongino.com/ep-2353-live-with-president-donald-trump

Nice note:  at the end of the interview, President Trump signed a baseball on-camera to be auctioned off --- 100 percent of the money going to OUR favorite charity, Samaritan’s Purse.