During a segment that was mostly about the various security failures that facilitated the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey made a point insufficiently expressed on the media: that if there is any rhetorical cooling to happen, it must also happen among “media personalities.”
Watch as Ramsey closes out his segment on CNN with that trenchant observation:
CNN SPECIAL COVERAGE
7/14/24
2:15 PM
CHARLES RAMSEY: You know, we don't need something like this to happen again. And it doesn't matter if you're Democrat or Republican. All of us should be outraged at the fact that an elected official or potential elected official, former president, was targeted for assassination. That should not happen in the United States of America, period. And anything any of us can do to prevent that from happening in the future. And certainly our elected officials and activists and even media personalities need to tone it down. You've got a lot of people out there that are mentally unstable and they hear all this rhetoric, and they take it upon themselves to do something. That is fund- that that is a huge part of the problem. It goes beyond establishing perimeters and having snipers in place and all that sort of thing. We've created an environment now where violence is something that we can actually expect to happen. And that is incredibly unfortunate.
The media have, so far, resisted calls to self-reflect upon their role in superheating our current political environment. In some cases, they even go so far as to cite debunked hoaxes as a reason for the current state of political rhetoric.
This makes Ramsey’s call to responsibility that much more important. He comes on CNN as an authority figure and says what we’ve all been saying over the past two days. In fairness, his call did include elected officials and activists. But the media need to take responsibility if there is indeed going to be a rhetorical “cooling down” at this critical juncture. Here’s hoping that they take the hint.
Click “expand” to view the full transcript as aired on CNN Special Report on Sunday, July 14th, 2024:
KAITLAN COLLINS: Joining me now is Charles Ramsey. He is the former Philadelphia Police Commissioner and also CNN's senior law enforcement analyst. And it's great to have you here because I want to get your take on two things we heard from President Biden, but the first one being this independent review that he is ordering from the Secret Service into the security perimeter as of last night. What does that look like? Who would conduct an independent review of the Secret Service?
CHARLES RAMSEY: Well, they need to have someone with a high level of credibility but the president's absolutely right. This has to happen and it has to happen as soon as possible. There was a major security breach, period. There's no way a potential assassin should get that close to a protectee or anyone else for that matter. Somebody dropped the ball. I mean, you know, you listen to the reports and they're saying, well, we saw a suspicious guy outside the perimeter. Well, what did you do? Did you stop them? Did you question them? Who's watching the rooftops? Do you have a person on the roof? Do you have drones? I mean, there are a lot of unanswered questions and somebody has to take a deep dive into it, but they need to do it sooner than later. You've got a major convention starting tomorrow, a month after that, you've got the Democratic convention. And then in-between you've got a lot of campaigning by both the president and the former president and their vice presidents. These people need to be protected. We cannot have a recurrence of something like this. Period.
COLLINS: Yeah, and he just came out of a room with the Secret Service director, Kimberly Cheadle- was in there with her. I mean, obviously we have not heard a lot from the Secret Service. They've confirmed initially the casualties, and the victims who were critically injured, then they reaffirmed that Donald Trump was not decide- denied any request for additional resources. But the Secret Service was not present at that briefing last night with the FBI special agent and the Pennsylvania State Police and so there are still a lot of questions that obviously there's some investigation underway. Everyone understands that, but it is important for them. How important do you believe it is for them to be out there and be transparent about what happened here?
RAMSEY: They need to be there. I mean, there's no excuse not to be there. I realize this is a tough time and, you know, I've run two police agencies. You have tough times. That's more important for you to be out front when you're in those tough times. Personally, I think the investigation should not be an internal investigation. It does need to be independent, which means this to me, someone from outside of that agency ought to be the person chairing that particular effort to make sure that it's transparent, to make sure they have uncovered everything they need to uncover. I have a suspicion they already probably know some of the things that broke down that didn't go well. It doesn't take long to figure that out. Question is, whether or not now or they are ready to really come forward with information. Do they have all the facts to verify and make sure that whatever theories you're working on right now actually turn out to be accurate ones that can be then shared with the public and lead to real change in terms of the security posture. Because apparently it wasn't working. It certainly didn't work yesterday
COLLINS: Yeah. It obviously put Donald Trump within an inch of his life, which is just a terrifying circumstance. The other thing President Biden said is he was- he was- he was speaking directly to people. And obviously we have heard a lot of conspiracy theories and misinformation pushed online in the hours since this assassination attempt happened. He's spoken- said, let the FBI do their job when it comes to determining the motive. Yet he said they weren't ready to say anything. Obviously, that- how long could that take for them to figure that out, as we're learning more about explosives, who this person was, what they were like at school, how long could it take for them to determine a potential motive here?
RAMSEY: Well, I’m not a profiler. I don't know if it'll take that long. They've got a lot of experience. The FBI is very good at this sort of thing, and they will take a deep dive and do a full psychological profile of this individual. Just from what I'm hearing right now, he kind of falls into a category that we've heard before. You know- kid that was bullied, the loner and so forth, access to a high-powered weapon. All those kinds of things. But the whole point of that is to learn from it so that when you identify in the future potential people that are capable of doing these kinds of things, you can identify them early on. Again, prevention is the whole thing. You know, we don't need something like this to happen again. And it doesn't matter if you're Democrat or Republican. All of us should be outraged at the fact that an elected official or potential elected official, former president, was targeted for assassination. That should not happen in the United States of America, period. And anything any of us can do to prevent that from happening in the future. And certainly our elected officials and activists and even media personalities need to tone it down. You've got a lot of people out there that are mentally unstable and they hear all this rhetoric, and they take it upon themselves to do something. That is fund- that that is a huge part of the problem. It goes beyond establishing perimeters and having snipers in place and all that sort of thing. We've created an environment now where violence is something that we can actually expect to happen. And that is incredibly unfortunate.
COLLINS: Yeah, and an incredibly dangerous environment as well. Police Chief Charles Ramsey. Thank you for joining.
