Guests - Betsy Smith, Dave Smith, Michael Letts, Laurie Moore
Another Bullet Dodged, a Country on Edge, and the People Fighting Back
The weekend that was supposed to be a celebration ended Saturday night with a Secret Service agent bleeding on the floor of a Washington hotel, a gunman tackled before he could reach the ballroom, and a president who gave a press conference a few hours later sharp enough to note — with unmistakable precision — that if he'd had his big, beautiful ballroom, none of it would have happened.
Monday on Winn Tucson opened on that. It did not close there. By the time the show ended, the conversation had moved from assassination attempts to body armor to the SAVE Act to Senate leadership to Mark Griffith's mayoral campaign to the Pima County Board of Supervisors' spending ambitions to the moral desert that Smith, Winn, and their guests believe is generating these shooters in the first place.
The thread connecting all of it: a country that is not short on problems or people willing to name them — but that is dangerously short on leaders willing to solve them.
Betsy Brantner Smith: The Shooter, the Security, and the Media That Incubated Both
Betsy Brantner Smith, spokeswoman for the National Police Association and longtime law enforcement professional, was the first voice on Monday's show — and the most precise in breaking down what actually happened at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday night.
What the Venue Made Possible
The narrative that there was no security at the event is simply wrong, Brantner Smith said. There was security — magnetometers, portable metal detectors, wanding procedures. Every attendee had to pass through them. What the venue made extraordinarily difficult was controlling access to those checkpoints.
"That hotel, that ballroom — I've actually taught in that ballroom, attended events there. It's not a good venue for security. There are eleven different entrances into that ballroom."
The suspect, Cole Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, was a hotel guest. He brought his weapons from California to Washington on a train. He had a paper invitation — the same kind that had been posted online for weeks. He did not attempt to pass through the magnetometers. He sprinted past them, past Secret Service agents, drawing his weapons as he ran. He fired a shotgun at a Secret Service agent, hitting him in the chest. The vest held. The agent was tackled. Allen was arrested before he ever reached the doors to the ballroom.
"He was stopped beforehand," Brantner Smith said. "Let's not forget that he didn't get into that room."
The ballroom's own overcrowding — which had concerned her husband Dave before the event even began — would have created a secondary casualty event from panic and stampede even if no one had been struck by gunfire.
Who Cole Allen Is — and How He Got There
Cole Allen holds a master's degree. He had been a teacher. He recently transitioned to tutoring. He attended a No Kings rally. His sister, watching him become increasingly consumed by far-left rhetoric and gaming communities, was alarmed enough that his family turned over his manifesto to law enforcement before Saturday's event.
The manifesto was reported to law enforcement in Connecticut. The event was in Washington, D.C. Whether that warning traveled between the two jurisdictions in time — and what happened to it if it did — remains an open question.
"If the FBI had to monitor every single far-left lunatic that gets on social media or spews far-left violence to their family members, we'd need about 2 million FBI agents," Brantner Smith said. She cited a report indicating that law enforcement investigated well over 7,000 threat cases last year and is tracking an even higher pace this year — all while facing a shortage of roughly 1,000 agents. And all while the agents they do have are operating without paychecks.
"This Secret Service agent got shot while he's not getting paid," she said. "He's working, he's protecting the president, he's doing his job. And Congress can't do theirs."
The Radicalization Machine
Cole Allen was not radicalized by some obscure corner of the internet, Brantner Smith argued. He was radicalized by systems and institutions operating in plain sight.
"He was radicalized by his school. He was radicalized by the teachers' union that he belonged to. He was radicalized by the mainstream media. He was radicalized by social media."
She noted that the very same people whose rhetoric has escalated to open calls for violence against this president — James Carville, who said publicly he wants to watch Trump suffer, not just die; Jimmy Kimmel, who ran a fake Correspondents' Dinner bit about Melania having the glow of a recent widow — emerged the morning after Saturday's attack to urge calm, then returned within hours to the same language.
"They're never going to dial this back. They're never going to stop calling for people to try and kill Donald Trump."
Hakeem Jeffries said the rhetoric needs to come down. Then, within hours, he was on X posting about far-right extremists in the legislature and invoking January 6. "That's all they have. January 6."
She also addressed the people claiming the assassination attempt was staged.
"You also have a fair number of people saying this event was staged. This is insane. Trump derangement syndrome is a psychological disorder that's real, and it is constantly egged on by our media."
She pointed to the Southern Poverty Law Center — which she and her husband have been discussing as a front organization for a decade — as recently implicated in directly funding extremist violence, with some of their personnel indicted. Democrats like Chuck Schumer, she noted, are upset about those indictments.
When Kathleen Winn observed that the room contained Democrats and Republicans both — that the shooter, had he made it inside, would have had no way of knowing who to aim at — Brantner Smith arrived at the most clarifying point of the segment.
"They want Donald Trump dead, Kathleen. And we have got to admit that. They want Donald Trump dead, and we have got to continue to call them out."
Dave Smith: Thune, the SAVE Act, Immigration, and the Moral Desert
Dave Smith — retired law enforcement officer, Betsy Brantner Smith's husband, and one of the sharpest political analysts in the Winn Tucson rotation — joined the conversation on multiple segments throughout the morning, and each time he brought a different axis of the same problem into focus.
Thune, Recess Appointments, and the Betrayal of the Electorate
Trump won the popular vote. He won the Electoral College. He is the duly elected president of the United States. And yet, Senate Majority Leader John Thune has structured Senate business in a way that has denied Trump recess appointments — something every other president in modern history has received as a basic operational tool.
"He has undermined your vote," Smith said flatly. "Next to illegal aliens, he is the greatest threat to your franchise there is."
His assessment of Thune's character was not diplomatic: a pretty boy from campus who has mistaken personal comfort for political leadership, who is now holding the SAVE Act hostage in a Senate stalemate that serves no one except people who don't want only citizens voting.
"You try to advocate for the Republican Party, you work your butt off for the Republican Party, and then a leader in our party does this kind of mutinous behavior."
The SAVE Act — which would require documentary proof of citizenship and photo ID to register to vote in federal elections — has passed the House. Eighty-four percent of Americans, including a substantial majority of registered Democrats when polled, support requiring only citizens to vote. Smith's fury is that this should be the most automatic legislative consensus in Washington. And it isn't, because Thune won't move it.
The Original Design of the Senate and Why It Matters
Smith reached back to the founding to explain why the current Senate crisis is structural, not just political.
"Our forefathers were worried about democracy, because democracy leads to exactly what we're seeing — a rise in totalitarianism, the 51% oppressing the 49%. That's why senators from the states were originally supposed to be elected by their legislatures."
The shift to direct popular election of senators, enacted in 1913, moved the center of gravity away from state legislatures and toward major urban populations. The result, Smith argued, is that the Senate has lost its character as a deliberative body representing the sovereign interests of states — and become a body where a handful of dense cities effectively determine who sits in what is supposed to be a chamber of geographic equals.
Add to that the unresolved question of who is actually casting ballots in those urban populations — and the entire franchise is compromised at the source.
Due Process, Civil Law, and the Left's Vocabulary Games
Winn raised the question of due process for people in immigration detention. Smith interrupted with a correction that had structural force.
"No. This is a civil issue. The due process is they're illegally in the United States — the judge gives them whatever, they get to leave. What's worse is we end up using the verbiage of the left, which gives them some kind of control over us."
He offered a practical analogy: next time you come back from an international trip and go through customs, tell the customs officer they can't search your luggage without a warrant. See how far that gets you. A nation's border is a categorically different legal space than the interior of the country. The right to demand a warrant at a border checkpoint does not exist — and treating people who crossed illegally as though they carried all the protections of a citizen standing in their living room is not a legal requirement. It is a political choice, dressed up in the language of law.
The Moral Desert and the Violence It Produces
In the show's second half, Smith connected the weekend's assassination attempt to what he called the fundamental condition of American society: an amoral desert in which violence is not just tolerated but academically sanctioned.
"Social conflict theory in law schools has made it so judges will not prosecute criminal behavior. Violence is criminal behavior and they write it off."
Tucson is not just a city with bad roads and a porous border. It is, statistically, one of the least church-going cities in the nation. Smith cited a figure that 72 percent of Tucson's roads are considered in severe disrepair — a physical marker of a deeper civic decay.
"What kind of Western civilization is that? Our schools don't teach values. They teach leftist malarkey."
He invoked the No Kings Day school walkouts, where children were coordinated by school staff to protest the phrase "no kings" — without being taught what a king was, what a republic was, or what the American founding actually said about both.
"These people don't want to be free. They want tyranny — their tyranny. They want their Obama, their Biden, their government. They don't have a problem with those who get killed. We already killed a million unborn children last year and we're not allowed to call them children."
He cited a Wisconsin bar's social media post in the aftermath of Saturday's attack — celebrating that it "almost got a free beer day" from Trump's potential assassination — as evidence that this is not isolated extremism. It is the logical downstream product of years of unchecked political dehumanization.
"America ever since 2000 has continuously descended. Obama was the next big force of hate in our country — the great divider. And Americans now, this young generation, are perfectly fine with violence."
His closing instruction was simple: vote. "There's only two things to create massive change — a vote or a revolution. Your vote is like firing a bullet, and it's not going to hit a vest."
Michael Letts: The Vest That Saved a Life, and the Law Enforcement Crisis No One Is Funding
Michael Letts, founder of InVest USA — a nonprofit organization that provides active shooter bulletproof vests to law enforcement officers who cannot otherwise afford them — joined with 22 media appearances already scheduled that day. The vest that stopped a shotgun blast from killing a Secret Service agent at the Correspondents' Dinner was, he confirmed, an active shooter vest performing exactly as designed.
"It did perform exactly as it was supposed to perform."
The Secret Service agent who was shot was back on his feet and trying to return to duty within fifteen minutes of hospital evaluation. That is what the vest made possible.
The Security Problem at the Hotel
Letts spent nearly thirty years in law enforcement and has worked with the Secret Service. His assessment of the venue's security challenges echoed Brantner Smith's but added a dimension from operational experience.
"We are operating off the same logistical operational plan that we used forty years ago with Reagan — and Reagan was shot at this hotel."
An open hotel in operation means people checking in and out, access points that cannot all be controlled simultaneously, and a ballroom that is part of a functioning commercial building. The security perimeter that can be maintained around a dedicated government facility simply does not exist in this environment. That is not an excuse. It is a constraint that calls for different approaches — including the ballroom that Trump proposed for the White House grounds and that the press corps and far-left politicians have mocked relentlessly.
"He's building it for future presidents," Letts said. "He recognizes the security issues that are needed for our heads of state. It's ironic that his critics mocked the ballroom when it just demonstrated exactly what it could have prevented."
The Teachers Who Are Training the Next Shooter
Letts was unambiguous about where Cole Allen came from and how many more like him exist in American classrooms right now.
"He's a teacher. This is not one in the country. There are thousands in our education system. They're training our next generation with their venom and hate. We think it's bad now — you haven't seen anything yet unless we get a handle on this and start demanding accountability from our teachers."
The degree of Cole Allen's radicalization was not visible to any single system in isolation. His gaming habits, his far-left ideology, his No Kings rally attendance, his family's warnings, his California origins, his Washington hotel stay — no single institution connected the dots in time. The profile of the modern domestic radicalized attacker, Letts argued, is now so common that law enforcement cannot track them all.
"If you talk to any chief or sheriff, I promise you 100% will tell you the biggest concern they have is they can't get anybody to wear the badge anymore. Young people are not applying."
The consequence of law enforcement attrition is not abstract. When the agencies protecting the president cannot retain officers — when the officers they do have are working without paychecks because Congress will not pass funding — the public safety infrastructure is degraded at exactly the moment threat levels are escalating.
The Funding Crisis and What Citizens Can Do
InVest USA operates as a nonprofit. It purchases and donates active shooter vests to departments that cannot afford them — which, given current federal funding paralysis, means an increasing share of departments across the country.
"Even if you only give a dollar — I want to tell our law enforcement officers that out of 330 million people in this country, 300 million of them support you and are standing back to back, shoulder to shoulder with you."
He noted that two officers had been killed in Chicago just before he appeared on the show. InVest USA is dedicating vests to the surviving families of fallen officers — a direct expression of organizational mission that he described not as charity but as acknowledgment of sacrifice.
The ask he made to Winn's listeners was also personal. When Winn noted that she had been married to a law enforcement officer and had watched a friend die in the line of duty — an undercover officer who could not wear a vest — Letts's response was quiet but precise: "Your officer made a difference. They stood for what was right."
InVest USA's website is indestuса.org (InVest USA, spelled out). Donations go directly toward active shooter vests for officers who need them.
On the question of whether the president should be wearing a vest, Letts offered this: "I've got an extra tool I'm going to tell them Catherine suggested. When I talk to him and the reply is that you've got it covered — I want to say, Mr. President, Kathleen is leading a movement across the country. All right. They love you and they want you to make sure you're safe. Please wear the vest."
Dave Smith and Laurie Moore: Tucson's Mayor Race, the Board of Supervisors' Grift, and the 11-Year-Old Who Shamed the City Council
The final segment brought together Dave Smith and Laurie Moore — both precinct committeemen, both regular attendees at Pima County Board of Supervisors and Tucson City Council meetings — to assess the ground-level state of the city and what comes next.
Does Tucson Need a New Mayor?
Smith answered without hesitation.
"We need a manager, a leader, a person who has an adult frame of reference. And that would be, of course, our good friend Mark Griffith versus the current clown show we have for a city council. The lead clown is, of course, Regina Romero."
Moore was equally direct, and added a proposal with genuine entertainment value: adopt a free city bus stop as a conservative civic project. Put your candidates on it. Keep it clean. Make a point.
"I can't even say it with a straight face. It is so true," Moore said of the state of city management. "I wanted to ask Dave — we should adopt a bus stop like she wants us to do and sanitize it and keep it clean."
Winn confirmed she'd ask KVOI station management.
Mark Griffith's campaign kickoff event — held Sunday at St. Phillips Plaza, hosted in part by Garrett Lewis — drew enough speakers and energy to signal that this is not a token opposition candidacy. The mayoral election is in 2027, which Smith noted as strategically correct: starting now gives time to build a genuine voter relationship before the race heats up.
The Free Bus System as a Petri Dish
Both Smith and Moore targeted Tucson's free bus system as a capsule of everything wrong with how the city prioritizes spending.
"Not only are they a petri dish of disease, it's a petri dish of criminality — transporting criminals all around town," Smith said. "Nowhere in the United States has public transportation been profitable. We literally reward people to run a business designed not to succeed and allow your streets to become intolerable."
Local law enforcement has an internal name for the free transit system that is not printable in polite company. Moore suggested health department swabs of the bus interiors given the city's stated COVID concerns. "Considering COVID was such a big important deal to these people, you would think the germs would matter."
The Spending Limit Maneuver and What It Actually Means
The Board of Supervisors' vote to refer a spending limit expansion to the November ballot — a measure that would effectively double the county's expenditure cap, from $762 million to $1.333 billion — was still reverberating through the room.
Smith framed it in terms that cut through the board's messaging.
"They're taking more and more and more of your money to redistribute the wealth — giving you less money to live, less money to pay for your own home. Meanwhile, they increase your assessed value and make it harder for you to keep that home, to give other people who will never use the homes they're talking about."
Moore connected it to the larger pattern of Tucson government policy: every problem the city claims to address gets worse the moment they address it. Homelessness. Affordable housing. Drug addiction. Transit.
"A lot of the homeless — the most severe level of homelessness — they're homeless for a reason. They need mental health care around the clock. Putting them in a house to think they're going to all of a sudden turn it around and take care of it is just not okay."
Her proposal: coordinate with mental health facilities in sanctuary cities — San Diego was her example — and send the most severe cases to where the political leadership has explicitly invited them, while ensuring they receive the intensive clinical care Tucson is not providing anyway.
The affordable housing push, both agreed, is not about creating homes for first-time buyers. It is the same NGO money-laundering model, restated for a new political environment. "Everything they address gets worse the minute they address it," Smith said. "And what they call it is not exactly the opposite of what it's going to create."
The 11-Year-Old Who Told the Truth
One moment from a recent city council meeting stopped the conversation. A boy — eleven years old — stood before the council and delivered a precise, substantive indictment of the city's public safety failures. The video circulated and accumulated thousands of views.
"We get more adulthood from an eleven-year-old than we get from our board of supervisors — except for Steve Christie," Smith said. "I always want to make sure we carve out a reality base. That's why we need a new mayor. We need a new board of supervisors. We need a new sheriff. We need nine non-corrupt adults."
Moore added the parallel: a father in another city who brought his young daughter before a board considering allowing boys into girls' restrooms. The father challenged every board member to go use the restroom and explain it to their own families. Common sense, applied in public, at volume.
"We just need more people speaking up," she said.
Nanos, Gallego, and the Accountability Gap
Winn closed the segment with her stated prayer for the week: that the Pima County Board of Supervisors would hold Sheriff Chris Nanos accountable for his refusal to either resign or tell the truth about his original application — specifically the details from his El Paso PD record that continue to surface.
"We should treat Nanos like we're treating Iran. No nuclear weapons and open the Strait of Hormuz. Sheriff Nanos should retire and bring peace to Pima County."
On Ruben Gallego — whose connection to Swalwell and whose own political future remain uncertain — Moore was blunt about the core question that has still not been answered.
"I still want to know the working definition for treason in the 21st century. How did Biden and that reign of terror get to open all these borders without vetting these people?"
Smith closed with the instruction that he, Brantner Smith, and Winn had each arrived at independently from their different vantage points.
"What can you do to get involved? We've got a mayoral election coming up in Tucson. We're going to have elections in other cities. Pay attention. Support your candidates and support your values. That yard sign has a lot of power. Put the yard sign up. Donate to the campaigns. Go to the rallies. Get involved. If this doesn't get you off the couch, I don't know what will. Save your county. Save your city. Save your country."
Winn Tucson airs Monday through Friday, 9 to 11 a.m., on KVOI 1030 The Voice.
InVest USA — protecting those who protect us: investusa.org. Every donation funds an active shooter vest for an officer who needs one.
Mark Griffith for Mayor of Tucson: MarkGriffithForMayor.com (number four).
The Pima County Board of Supervisors spending limit expansion is headed for the November ballot. Vote no.