Live from Wisconsin this morning post-National GOP convention is Oakland County state senator and delegate Jim Runestad.

He is on OTR this week with what happened.

Our lead story, the assassination attempt on the former president.

And what is Joe Bide going to do: The Michigan Impact Around the OTR table, Chad Livengood, Lauren Gibbons, and Ben Solis sitting with us as we get the inside out Off the Record.

Production of Off the Record is made possible, in part, by Martin Waymire, a full-service strategic communications agency, partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and public policy engagement.

Learn more at MartinWaymire.com.

And now this edition o Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Thank you very much.

Welcome back to Studio on an incredibly busy news week.

And when we put this show to bed last week on Friday, we did not know what was going to happen on Saturday.

And here's the impact in Michigan when it did.

Newly-elected Macomb County Republican U.S. Representative John James and an official from Detroit, Dr. Ben Carson, a former member of the Trump administration, alleged this, Now they have tried to kill him which suggests an alleged plot to murder the former president.

It was just that kind of speculation that President Biden warned against as he launched an FBI probe into what did happen.

The FBI is leading this investigation, which is still in its early stages.

We don't yet have any information about the motive of the shooter.

We know who he is.

I urge everyone, everyone, please don't make assumptions abou his motives or his affiliations.

Let the FBI do their job, and their partner agencies do their job.

I've instructed that this investigation be thorough and swift.

Michigan Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, offered something more mainstream.

Quote, "This is not how we solve our differences."

And she said she was horrified to hear of this news.

The state Republican Party chair, Pete Hoekstra, called for prayers for the former president and the country.

His Democratic counterpart, Chairwoman Lavora Barnes, condemned the act in Pennsylvania, quote, "In the strongest terms."

Meanwhile, another Michigan Republican Congresswoman, Lisa McClain, blamed the shooting on, quote, "Eight years of radical left demonstrations against Donald Trump."

And in the U.S. Senate contest, the two frontrunners checked in.

Democrat Elissa Slotkin said basically, she was hoping for th safety of the former president.

And Republican Mike Rogers called it a somber moment for the natio and he also called for prayers.

Meanwhile, Democratic Genese County Congressman, Dan Kildee, summed it up this way, quote, "Violence is never the answer."

So then you headed up the coverage of this stor for the good folks at Gongwer.

How did you— What did you do?

My best.

You know, this is a situation that is unprecedented.

We haven't had a situation like this where a candidate, an American president, or any political figure has been the subject of an assassination attempt.

You know, it's heinous, but I think overall, we can just look at it politically.

It's just so unproductive.

You know, we have bloody history in this country and maybe an innate drive to fight but we've got to learn how to leave that behind if we're going to move forward.

Obviously, it was a horrifying situation.

And I really feel for all the people who are attending this rally.

You know, we cover rallies all the time as journalists, especially in Michigan where there are a lot of them.

You know, I was at the Biden rally the night before.

And so I was really feeling for all of the people in attendance who were just trying to see a presidential candidate speak.

And obviously, as Ben said, it is not productive.

And it's truly just horrible to think that this is where we're at in politics and society.

Tim, the first presidential campaign rally I ever went to was 14 years old.

It was 1996.

And Bob Dole gave a rally outside in downtown Chelsea, my hometown.

They shut down M-52, which anyone knows tha has driven through there knows that is the main road through town to Main Street.

So Dole could have a campaign rally outside.

And one of my lasting memories was seeing snipers on every rooftop, police snipers on the rooftop of JIFFY Mix and the Common Grill building and whatnot.

And so what is just astonishing is the idea that someone can get within 160 feet of a president or presidential candidate or any politician speaking at an outdoor event like that and take a shot.

And I think we're not we still don't have all the fact but a lot of things emerged this week about witnesses and whatnot.

But there's going to be a lot of real major inspection here.

I know Congress is going to start having hearings as soon as Monday with the Secret Service director.

And there's going to be some serious evaluation about how politicians move around.

We've already see a lot more heightened security.

And with just our own governor after the attempted— the plot to kidnap her.

And so I think we're going to see more and more change of how these events are handled.

Well, when the president said in that piece, "Don't make assumptions," that was wishful thinking in this current climate, Ben, that's the game.

It may have been.

You know, what we do know is that it was a massive security failure.

But of course, everyone wants to fill in the blanks.

And in this environment that we have now, as Lauren touched on, as Chad touched on, it's easy for people to try and find some kind of explanation there.

Pete Hoekstra called for a cooling of taps, but we didn't really see that from a lot of surrogates.

Immediately.

There was this rush to judgment that this was the left that attacked, you know, Donald Trump and let the people do their work.

And you saw it in the Republican National Convention this week, the messaging, you know, they tried they tried to impeach him, then they tried to jail him and then they tried to kill him.

I mean, this is you're going to hear this over and over and over.

And the Republicans are using this to rally their base, to strengthen their coalition at a time when the Democratic Party is in somewhat of a freefal right now with their candidate.

Well, in particular, the R's want the D's to back of this concept that Donald Trump is trying to destroy the democracy.

In fact, he said last night, I am restoring and saving the democracy.

You know, if anything, the political temperature has risen significantly despite all of these calls to come togethe and condemn political violence.

You know, and certainly, yes that has been a sticking point.

You know, and Democrats have really been pushing hard on that, citing the 2020 election and the fallout, especially from Trump, you know, claiming fraud happened.

And so that has been something that Democrat have really tried to resurrect and say this is what happened last time.

It could happen again.

And certainly Republicans are trying to to forge ahead.

It is pretty clear that the orchestration at that convention, I was not there, obviously.

And we'll talk to our guest about it I'm sure was to present a different Donald Trump.

It was.

I mean, and they di they did do a good job of that.

The granddaughter probably did the best.

The granddaughter was, which was very sweet and always good to help helps to have granddaughters and also just other family members and people now.

Now Hulk Hogan that was a little different, to say the least.

The Trump travel maniacs, is that what they call it.

They call Trump mania?

Trump mania?

Yeah, but yes.

And also like Trump himself, like his speech from Thursday night started out with this sort of retelling his own story, a harrowing story of surviving assassin's bullet by a centimeter, basically by a quarter.

Of a head.

Turn of a head and this chart I looked over this beautiful chart.

He kept saying, and I thin we're going to see this chart.

He's going to be showing this chart off for the rest of his life, probably because it may have saved his life by looking at it.

But but he yeah, he started that way.

Then, of course, Trump could not help himself.

He turned into campaign stump speech and started throwing all the red meat.

And I mean, at one point I messaged Craig Mauger, who was, you know, there in Milwaukee.

I said, is this attack on Sean Fain, the UAW president, is this in the speech?

He's like, no, it's not in the speech.

And so Which is vintage Donald Trump?

If it was vintage Donald Trump, he did all this choreography to show him as this hero, as this national hero.

And then, of course, you know, he did what he does and he went down into sort of a darker place and, you know, further into his 93 minute speech.

I would argue, though, that it was might have been red meat, but it was leaner red meat.

It was not as as, you know, vociferous as he could have been.

We have seen Trump g much harder in these situations.

Could it be that this assassination Trump attempt called him back a little bit?

Was it necessary to present a much more steady Trump in that?

To a degree, yeah.

But of course, he couldn't help himself.

The Biden story obviously is going to be a biggie as everybody moves into this weekend.

Will he or won't he What's going on there, Lauren?

In Michigan.

I mean, certainly it's th question on every Democrat's min I think, like, will they be, you know, will Biden be the nominee or will someone else come in to take the place?

And it is looking increasingly likely that, you know, someone else may step in.

I was at the Biden rally last weekend and on Friday in Detroit.

And, you know, he actually you know, he he was pretty fiery.

He was really stating, I'm the nominee.

You know, Democrat elected me through the primary.

He was really adamant that he was going to stay in the race.

But he has gotten so much pressure from very high up Democrats at this point that maybe it's time to step bac and let someone else take it on.

You know what the implications are?

We don't really know yet.

It's a huge deal.

It's a historic thin that he's even considering this this outcome.

And to step aside.

To bail out this late is reall unprecedented in modern history.

And so and then on top of that, I mean, the end the day, this is all about power.

Joe Biden wants to stay in power.

Democrats in Congress want to stay in power.

And they start looking at the polls.

They start looking at reality.

Reality that they probably could have had this conversation a year ago, this debate a year ago, but nobody would step up.

Nobody would cross the president and all these allies would in Congress some of them also quite old themselves would not have this dialog with him or even entertain the debate and so, you know, you can kind of step back and say, boy, this was kind of predictable that this would eventually happen, where they would have to come to terms of this with whether he is able to continue doing this job.

And it really has, you know, sort of the proverbial chickens have come home to roost now.

Well the governor continues on her book tour, by the way, number three on The New York Times list, that's that's not bad.

That's not bad for a governor.

But she basically told one group on the speculation issue, what about Vice President Miss Whitmer?

And she said, I would never say never which certainly opens that door.

It does.

And her name has been kind of bandied about at the national level, whether or not she wants that or accepts it or if she's even asked.

There's a lot of other names out there as well.

That all remains to be seen.

I think a lot is up in the air.

But certainly, you know, he book came out at the right time.

If we do this with a game plan and.

game is out for a second, if Biden were to step down and he were to say, I want to throw my support behind Vice President Kamala Harris to be the nominee, Harris could pick her own vice president, but or they could have a floor figh at the national convention over who is who is the vice president member.

In the past.

Oh, way past.

Presidents didn't always get to pick their vice president.

They got saddled by essentially by by the party machine.

I mean, Roosevelt did not pick Truman.

Truman just got shoved on him by the Democratic machine.

And so in the 1944 convention.

So you get a scenario like that where where people go to the convention and they and and there's a brokered, you know, deal or multiple balloting over who is the running mate even.

And that's presuming that they accept Harris out of the gate and she wins the nomination at a convention.

So this this could get really interesting again we're maybe getting ahead of ourselves because we don't have a president.

See how close we came.

All right.

All right.

Let's go out to Wisconsin and let's say good morning to state senator from Oakland County, Jim Runestad.

Senator welcome back to Off the Record.

Nice to see you, sir.

What tim did you get to bed last night?

Well we got out of there very late.

You know, Donald Trump wanted to win with I guess, a record long speech.

And then there was balloons and thousands of balloons.

I've never seen so many balloons in my life.

And then this sea of balloons, you had to get through it to get to the exits.

And then there's people, you know, that were worried about whether they can get pas the balloon or slip on the boats that were popping the balloons.

And so I jus it took a long time to get out.

And Madison is an hou and 25 minutes from Milwaukee.

So it was a late night getting getting home, but one to get up for for the show here.

So I'm up and ready for it.

Thank you, Senator.

Appreciate that.

So you listen to the speech last night.

Was there any point in the middle of that speech that you said to yourself this guy is just over promising way too much in a quick effort to get everything done?

Did you think that at all?

Well, I would say I would have normally thought that because my experience the this I started being a pilot and paying attention to politics, which has been maybe since I was 15, was I would watch these presidential candidates run and just blow smoke relentlessly in the primary.

They would be running to the left, to the right.

And as soon as that was over they get in the general election and they're moving to the middle and jettisoning all their promises.

Then they would get elected and they jettisoned all those promises.

And so I was very used to presidents lying through their teeth.

And Donald Trump's the first person I ever remember who said, Well, no, I promise this and this and this.

None of us thought he was actually going to do any of this stuff.

He was the first one that said, No, I promised them and I will try to get these things done so well.

He behaved that same way.

I think he will try to get these things done.

Senator, I want to ask you, in your district, the GM plant in Orient Township, or maybe I'm not sure that's your district but apologies in Oakland County that that plant is going to be building all electric Chevy Silverado trucks.

Do you see the U.S. in direct competition with the Chinese on building EVs, given what Donald Trump talke about last night, about Chinese manufacturers building assembly plants just over the border in Mexico right now for EVs?

I don't know how anyone could not reach that conclusion.

The Chinese are building better cars at reduced costs more than ever before.

They have contracts with countries all over the world to get chromium and nickel and all of the the materials you need for batteries.

We have to buy all the stuff from them.

So I think they will be highly, highly competitive.

And I know everything I've heard is, yeah, they do want to start building in Mexico and start importing cars here to exporting cars to the U.S.

So I fully expect all that's going to happen.

And I think that's part of the reason why Donald Trump said that the head of the UAW needs to go is that with the EVs, it's a fraction of the number of autoworkers.

So if we're taking in Chinese cars over the Mexican border and then we're transitioning to EVs, it is going to eviscerate the the number of the employees that are going to be employed in the auto industry here in Michigan.

But what is what is Shawn Fain, the UAW president, have to do with the way the Chinese are are bringing in cheaper cars because their workers aren't paid nearly as much as what a UAW worker makes?

Is it just said that the plan of the Chinese is to import very cheap Chinese cars and Donald Trump is the one who really is making this issue, as he did last night.

You make an issue, we'r going to put a tariff on this.

We're not going to let them just flood the nation with these cheaper cars.

And I didn't hear any of that on a Biden But but the head of the UAW is 100% behind Biden anyway.

So the point Donald Trump was making, as I am really trying to protect these jobs of these autoworkers in Michigan and the president is not and the UAW is supporting Biden anyway.

As we have just been discussing, voters are dealing with a lot of heavy issues right now, both with the attempt of this assassination, the possibilit of a new Democratic candidate.

What was the mood of Republicans who are attending the convention as as all of this news was coming out There's a real sense of absolute excitement going on in the Republican Party like I haven't seen in years.

And the Republicans could see the Democrats are in absolute meltdown.

And the the Democrats were not wanting to deal with the fact you hear all these comments.

But when every gaffe that he was making that were like just historically terrible gaffes, where he doesn't seem to even know who people are and they're covering for him, covering Trump, and now it's all coming to a head.

And we've been talking about this for months and months and months, but it's just not been gettin the kind of coverage it should.

Now, after the debate, there seemed the problem they're going to have to have some real tough choices on our side of the aisle.

I've never seen more unity, more excitement than ever.

I couldn't believe that Nikki Haley came in such a strong critic of Donald Trump.

Many of the other past competitors of Donald Trump coming together within our caucus.

There's Nikki Haley supporters there.

There's DeSantis supporters.

Every single person was absolutely 100% united.

And you don't see that ofte anymore in the Republican Party.

This is a unique moment.

Senator.

You know, GOP leaders and Trum campaign officials have called for cooling of rhetoric mainly towards Donald Trump.

But, you know, you still se a lot of Republican surrogates on the attack towards the Democrats, saying that they'll they'll quite literally destro democracy if they if they win.

How can you expect that of your opponents when some people in the GO just choose not to do the same?

You know, you're going to have some people who are disordered o knuckleheads and every faction.

It doesn't matter what political party you're talking about that's always going to happen.

And so those are these outliers in picking and choosing.

One thing that one person sai who's, you know, some low level, you know, activist is no the same as what the president is saying or very high people in in positions of power.

And I think that i if people like Donald Trump said that if if Biden got reelected, our our democracy is gone, people are going to be thrown in concentration camps.

He's a fascist.

He's Hitler.

I would say that's outrageous.

But I don't hear that from Democrats because that's precisely what they're saying about Donald Trump.

I believe that's unacceptable to make these ridiculous, monstrous lie that a guy who was the president for four years is suddenly going to order.

Okay If he can ever even get people to start throwing people in concentration camps by the millions and then become Hitler in fashion.

None of this people watched this last night.

No, that's all B.S.

And yet this has been the thing that the president has been saying.

There's there's levels of unacceptability that and decoru that I think scaring the people, that if my opponent is elected, they're going to kick in the doors with Gestapo and tak you off to a concentration camp.

I think that that's that's off the pail.

And I haven't heard a comment like that unless one of you can say that that Donald Trump has said about President Biden, not.

Necessarily Donald Trump himself, But I mean, that was a common theme throughout the convention from top surrogates who spoke at the convention.

You didn't hear that during your time there.

Name one who said that Biden is is a fascist.

He is he's going to throw people in concentration camps.

No, I didn't hear one person speak or you can cite one.

I was there.

I didn't hear what person say something like that.

Senator, the Republican Party just adopted a platform that calls for a mass deportation of illegal immigrants.

And Donald Trump has talked about this in broad terms and not ruled out the idea of having some kind of detention system, essentially camps of some sort to to to pull together as many as 11 million people who are in the countr entered the country illegally.

What would this look like, in your mind, to try to try to deport this many people?

Wouldn't it have to involve some type of detention center type system?

But number one, if you're conflating somebody who broke into the country, who maybe a cartel member and a child trafficker being detained, along with political opponents who are citizens, there's a little bit of difference there.

But number two, after World War two, we had hundreds of thousands of people come in across the border illegally to work in the factories because we had so many soldiers gone after World War Two, they had to go throug a deportation to get them out of the citizens rights were not violated.

Getting rid of these people here illegally.

And yes, we have now maybe 10 million people.

This is a catastrophe.

They're getting benefits on the backs of the taxpayer, as Donald Trump talked about yesterday, People can't rent homes, but we have 10 to 15 million new people looking for homes.

So people who are young can't start a family because they're we've got housing millions and millions of people that shouldn't even be in this country.

So I think the vast majority of people if you if you look at the polls, they agree we shouldn't b supporting all of these people from 180 countries unvetted, pouring into the country.

We need to deport them.

Senator, something more mundane on the state budget, as you watched the Democrats in this governor passed this budget, what were you thinking?

I was thinking it was absolutely outrageous, $83 billion that have all of our taxpayers federal dollars in the dead of night.

And I've seen Republicans and Democrats do that.

I've been disgusted with that all the way through.

Over 400 million and pe projects were already starting to unearth this.

It's a complete corrupt system.

I have been working with Republicans and Democrats for the last month trying to change the rules.

Coming up, when they get elected, thing like 72 hours to read the bill.

How is it we hours before reading an $82 billion bill of the most complex 2000 pages you can imagine the pet projects.

We won't find out until a month.

So who's got the pet projects?

Why are those listed in the budget?

That's another reform that I've been working to try to get done.

I still believe and I've said it before, I believe Michigan is the least transparent and perhaps the most corrupt state in the nation.

I've been talking to delegates here, and I tell them from other states how Michigan operates.

You have no bid contracts to companies in exchange for campaign cash.

They said, this is your mission.

It's like a banana republic.

Oh, yeah, Yeah.

It's probably the worst.

I've talked to all these states as to why don't you could give a no bid contract to a company where there's no purchasing, There's no there's no guardrails, no give campaign cash to give all of this mone to your private company, no bid.

Nobody else can get it.

So I've been trying to wor at getting this rotten edifice of Michigan's appropriation process corrected.

But we'll see.

It doesn't matter who's in power.

This process continues.

So both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of your word corrupt action on the budget.

Is that correct, sir?

100%.

I mean, I've been here in nine half years.

I've been fighting this stuff.

Let's get transparency in the appropriation.

How in God's name are we having all of these this corruption?

And you guys, are the medi still unearthing more and more?

It seems like every week now the Democrats their is coming out and before that it was the Republicans.

I don't see anything getting fixed.

So the media's got to pound and pound this issue that we should not be allowing these dead of night deal cutting.

You know, who is the good boys and the good girl that get all these pet projects that have no applicability to what the people want?

It's all in exchange for this rotten corruption.

Senator thank you for doing our program.

Have a safe trip back home and we'll see you on the other side, sir.

Thank you.

Thanks to our panel.

Good show.

See you next week.

For more off the record on who knows what's going to happen next.

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