On Tuesday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: USA TODAY Domestic Security Correspondent Josh Meyer discusses the Secret Service measures on Sunday surrounding the apparent assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump, and what's next for the suspect. A range of celebrities 'love' Taylor Swift after Donald Trump's 'hate' comment. USA TODAY White House Correspondent Joey Garrison takes a look at how Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris fare in a new exclusive USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll from Pennsylvania. The Coast Guard's Titan submersible hearing has begun.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Tuesday, September 17th, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today, the latest in the aftermath of Sunday's apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump. Plus we talk about Taylor Swift in this year's election and Trump's recent post about the pop star. And we take a look at polling in the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania.

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We're learning more about the apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on Sunday, though plenty of questions remain. I caught up with USA TODAY, Domestic Security Correspondent, Josh Meyer, for more. Josh, thanks for hopping on today.

Josh Meyer:

My pleasure, Taylor.

Taylor Wilson:

So Josh, what do we know as of now in terms of what happened Sunday at Donald Trump's Florida golf course?

Josh Meyer:

We just got a big information dump from the Fed's Secret Service Acting Director, said a couple of important things. One was that the suspect, Ryan Routh, never got a shot off. So this is much different than the last assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania when the shooter had a clear line of sight to the former president, was able to fire off about eight rounds and hit Trump in the ear. In this case, the Secret Service director said that the suspect did not get a shot off. Also, that he didn't really have a clear line of sight to the president, and that it was quick action by the Secret Service agents that thwarted the attack.

Taylor Wilson:

So Josh, have we learned anything since about the suspect, his background and what his motive might've been here?

Josh Meyer:

So yeah, at the same news conference, an FBI official said that they're still really trying to run that stuff to ground. They're interviewing a bunch of family members, friends and so forth. But this guy seems to be an itinerant wanderer. He went to Ukraine to try to fight against Russia. He was told that he was too old and inexperienced, and essentially stayed there for a while trying to recruit people. And then somehow ended up in Palm Beach at Trump's golf course, hiding in the bushes, allegedly, and pointing a gun in the vicinity of Trump, who was golfing with a friend when the Secret Service found him.

Taylor Wilson:

So what's next, legally, for this suspect? What's the expectation here?

Josh Meyer:

I think what's next for the suspect is that he's going to be facing an arraignment in court and have to answer to the charges, enter a plea, and we'll go from there. I think he's been deemed to be eligible for a public defender. As that plays out, we're going to be hearing, hopefully, from the feds about who he was, what drove him to Palm Beach to do this, allegedly, and where he got the gun and other important details of this alleged plot.

Taylor Wilson:

Josh, you and I talked a couple months ago after the first assassination attempt on Trump and some of the criticisms that the Secret Service faced over the summer. How do experts say the Secret Service handled this incident, and how are Secret Service officials reacting in the wake of this?

Josh Meyer:

That's a good question, Taylor. The Acting Secret Service Director, Ronald Rowe, said yesterday that he thinks the Secret Service agents did everything they could and should have done to thwart this attack, but there are some questions about it. One of the questions is, "Did they do all they could to surveil the site? Did they have aerial drones up like some former Secret Service agents told me they should have?" But another big question is that according to cell phone records, the suspect was actually lying in wait for Trump for at least 12 hours, starting the night before, at that very location.

So the question is, the agents on the ground that were surveilling the site and ahead of and behind Trump as he played golf, were they doing their job to really root out potential threats beforehand? In response to that, Rowe, the Acting Secret Service Director, said, "This was what was known as a off-the-record movement," which means that it wasn't on the calendar. They probably didn't get a lot of advanced notice and that they essentially did whatever they could to make sure that Trump was protected. So lots of questions that we have to figure out.

Taylor Wilson:

Where do we go from here, Josh? This is the second assassination attempt on Trump in two months. How big of a concern is his safety going forward? And does the Secret Service plan on making any adjustments to keep him safe along with other major figures, president Joe Biden, Kamala Harris as well during this election cycle?

Josh Meyer:

The Secret Service chief said that they are providing, especially after the Butler, Pennsylvania incident where Trump nearly was killed, that they are giving them the maximum level of security. But he also acknowledged that they need more funding, that they're talking to the White House and Congress about that, and that they're trying to do even more to protect the candidates and so forth. They have about several dozen protectees that they protect.

One of the things would be to ask Trump to curtail some of these outdoor activities. He likes to golf, everybody knows that, and that might even be how the suspect allegedly found him on the golf course. But Trump also likes to hold outdoor rallies, and so it's possible that the Secret Service will ask him to curtail that. But I don't think Trump's going to want to do that, especially with the election less than 60 days away. So we're, as usual with Trump, in uncharted waters and we'll have to see what happens next.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, Josh Meyer covers domestic security for USA TODAY with some great insight for us as always. Thank you, Josh.

Josh Meyer:

My pleasure. Thanks, Taylor.

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Taylor Wilson:

Former president Donald Trump is taking on pop icon, Taylor Swift, after she endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris following last Tuesday's debate. Swift's Instagram post that night said, "Harris is a steady-handed and gifted leader," and added that Americans can, "Accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos." Her endorsement addressed subjects from IVF to LGBTQ+ rights. And within an hour of posting, more than three million people had liked the post, ranging from Selena Gomez to WNBA superstar, Caitlin Clark.

And as of last Wednesday evening, a custom URL shared by Swift on her Instagram story that expired after 24 hours had directed more than 400,000 visitors to Vote.gov, according to a spokesperson from the General Services Administration. By comparison, in the week leading up to the debate, Vote.gov received about 30,000 visitors a day. Then on Sunday morning came this zinger from Trump on his Truth Social channel writing, "I hate Taylor Swift." The response, since then, from other celebrities has been, well, Swift.

Celebs ranging from Stephen King to Flavor Flav and Mark Hamill have hit social media with support and love for the pop star and the hashtag #IloveTaylorSwift was trending globally. The former president has returned to lashing out at major celebrities with whom he disagrees, something he did often during his time in office. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.

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Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, narrowly leads Republican nominee, Donald Trump, in the battleground state of Pennsylvania according to a trio of exclusive USA TODAY Suffolk University polls taken after last week's debate. I spoke with USA TODAY, White House correspondent, Joey Garrison, to learn more. Hi there, Joey.

Joey Garrison:

Hey, how are you doing?

Taylor Wilson:

Good, good. Thanks for hopping on today, Joey. So who leads from this polling, Joey? And how do these two candidates compare on favorability?

Joey Garrison:

So our poll found that Kamala Harris has a three-point lead over Trump, 49% to 46%. This is within the margin of error. In terms of favorability, that's one of the reasons why Harris is winning. She has a much stronger favorability rating than former President Trump. 49% have a favorable opinion of her compared to 47% who have an unfavorable opinion. That's compared to only 43% of likely Pennsylvania voters who said they have a favorable opinion of Trump. 54% had an unfavorable opinion of the former president. And so those are hard numbers for the former president to overcome, and that's one of the reasons he's down according to our poll, though, still a dead heat that's within the margin of error.

Taylor Wilson:

Joey, how do these things break down by county? And what might be the significance of that on election night?

Joey Garrison:

Well, we don't have the full county results, but what USA TODAY, in conjunction with Suffolk University did, is isolate what are two bellwether counties, historically, and those are Erie County and Northampton County. As a bellwether, what we mean by that is who that county votes for tends to predict who the state, as a whole, votes for. And right now, Harris leads both of those counties as well. She has a five-point lead in Northampton County. That is in East Pennsylvania. In Erie County, which is in northwest Pennsylvania, she has a slimmer four-point lead.

And so again, those are good signs for Vice President Harris. This is coming out of the debate in which she was widely seen as outperforming Trump. So this is a snapshot on those four days following the debate. We often look at this electoral map, grouping up Pennsylvania with Wisconsin and Michigan. And Pennsylvania has been the one that has, in most polling, proven to be the most difficult for Harris, where Trump has sometimes led in that one and it's been tied. But this poll shows real ground that Harris has made up right now, and it's a good time for her with now 50 days before the election.

Taylor Wilson:

And Joey, did we learn anything about undecided voters in the state, in this polling?

Joey Garrison:

There's about 5% undecided. And so which direction those people go could ultimately decide who wins the state. One interesting thing to think about this really nationally as well, but also in Pennsylvania, is there's a huge gender gap between female and male voters that is benefiting Vice President Harris. She's up 17 points among female voters in Pennsylvania. That's a really wide margin.

Whereas Trump is up among male voters, but it's by a tighter 12 points. So you can see how when you balance those out, that gives Harris a slight advantage there. And one of her big campaign messages has been restoring abortion rights. That is an issue where the majority of women voters share her position on that. And so that could give her an edge on getting some of these undecided female voters, particularly in the suburban areas outside of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, for example.

Taylor Wilson:

Joey, we're talking about Pennsylvania on a national show here. So really, why does Pennsylvania matter? How big of a deciding factor will it play in the national presidential election come November?

Joey Garrison:

I think Pennsylvania is going to be the most important state in terms of deciding who is going to win the election. If you take out Pennsylvania for either Harris or Trump, it's just hard to put together their pathway to the 270 electoral votes. Now, for the Harris perspective, for example, if she carries Pennsylvania, then all she needs to do is win Michigan, Wisconsin. Never mind any of the other battleground states: Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Arizona. Forget about them. If she wins those three, including Pennsylvania and all the other states that Biden won in 2020, she will be elected.

Conversely, if you take out Pennsylvania and Trump all of a sudden has that, that puts him in the driver's seat. All of a sudden she has to make that up by winning two of those other swing states that I mentioned to make up for those 19 electoral votes. In some of the swing states that haven't been as favorable to her, like in Arizona or Georgia, all of a sudden you're going to have to pick up one of those. And so that's just one example on her side, why it is so vital. The same isn't as true as much for some of the other battleground states.

And the main reason is of all the seven main battleground states we talk about, Pennsylvania has the most electoral votes, 19. And so really, it is the key state. One other interesting bit to think about as we look ahead to the Electoral College and how this will play out in November, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, those three states have voted for the same candidate in each election since 1988. There, of course, could be a split. We're not saying that there wouldn't, but the odds are that you could see that reflected throughout that, what Democrats like to call, the Blue Wall as a representation of their strength there.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, great explainer as always. Joey Garrison is a White House correspondent with USA TODAY. Thank you, Joey.

Joey Garrison:

Hey, thanks for having me on.

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Taylor Wilson:

The Titan submersible imploded just over two miles below sea level in June of 2023. The world anxiously waited four days to hear the fate of the five people on board. That fate was shown in a stark video animation that played at the beginning of the Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigations public hearing being held in South Carolina. The video documents the course of the Titan as it was taken out to sea by its support vessel, the Polar Prince, and the chatter between the Titan and the crew of the ship.

All five occupants were crushed by tremendous pressures as they sank toward the bottom where they hoped to view the wreckage of the Titanic. Yesterday, Tony Nissen, former engineering director of OceanGate, the company that owned the Titan and organized the expedition, told Coast Guard officers that there had been multiple problems with the design and performance of the Titan submersible in the years before the ill-fated voyage in 2023. Nissen said Stockton Rush, the co-founder of the company, pushed hard on costs and schedules and was difficult to work with. Nissen described post-dive hull crack problems that he observed in the Titan's novel carbon fiber hull in 2018 and 2019.

Tony Nissen:

And I said, "Titan's got a crack in it." I said, "The hull's done." And I spent a couple hours trying to convince people that, no, this is not salvageable. And I was on a plane, I think the next day with a couple of other folks down to the Bahamas to go take a look at it. And we started carving it out and noticed that the crack was bigger than we thought.

Taylor Wilson:

Nissen was fired in June of 2019. Also, yesterday, OceanGate's, former human resources and finance director told the hearing panel that the company's former director of marine operations had advised a potential customer the vessel was not safe. You can read more from the ongoing hearing with a link in today's show notes.

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And today is Constitution Day. The federal observance recognizes the crucial US document and folks who have become US citizens. Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.