Britain's Last Play: The Hidden Hand Behind Trump's Third Assassination Attempt

Susan Kokinda: Saturday night, Donald Trump was the target of a third assassination attempt, and it happened at the very same Washington Hilton where Ronald Reagan was shot 45 years ago.

Here’s what the President said:

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“You know, I’ve studied assassinations, and I must tell you, the most impactful people, the people that do the most, you take a look at the people, Abraham Lincoln, I mean you go through the people that have gone through this – where they got them – but the people that do the most, the people that make the biggest impact, they’re the ones that they go after.

“They don’t go after the ones that don’t do much because they like it that way. And when you look at the people that have either, whether it was an attempt or a successful attempt, they’re very impactful people. Just take a look at the names here, the big names.”

Susan Kokinda: He’s right, and he knows exactly what he’s talking about. And the timing of what’s happening this week tells you everything. Today, King Charles arrives in Washington, just as a conveniently timed book is published called ‘The Queen and Her Presidents: The Hidden Hand That Shaped History’.

Well, that hidden hand is not happy with Donald Trump, as a new House of Lords report released at Chatham House last week makes very clear.

So we have a thwarted assassination attempt, a Royal visit, and a Chatham House forum. These are not separate events, although the media will treat them that way.

But if you understand how Donald Trump and his administration are dismantling the strategic and economic levers of the British Empire, then you will understand just how connected they are and just how dangerous the current moment is.

I’m Susan Kokinda. I’m no stranger to assassinations or assassination attempts. In 1968, I was with RFK Sr.’s campaign when he was shot. And I was in the press pool in 1981 at GW Hospital, waiting to find out the fate of Ronald Reagan, who had just been shot at that same Washington Hilton.

There is a hidden hand behind this. And if you want to understand what it is, hit those like, share, and subscribe buttons.

So here’s what I’m going to cover today: First, the importance of President Trump identifying the reason behind political assassinations.

Second, how a new book spills the beans on the power and influence of the Monarchy, just in time for King Charles’ visit.

And third, the new House of Lords report, which admits that the Empire is toast without a cooperating United States, which Donald Trump’s America is not.

So Saturday night at the Washington Hilton, a 31-year-old man from California, Cole Thomas Allen, charged the Secret Service checkpoint carrying a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives.

So you have Butler, Pennsylvania, Palm Beach, Florida, and the Washington Hilton. Three attempts in under two years.

How Saturday’s attack happened brings up serious and manifold security questions, which Barbara Boyd is diving into and will have more to say on soon.

But I’m going to address the why. President Trump said it, but to really understand it, you have to go back 125 years. Because the last president who genuinely threatened the British imperial system was William McKinley.

Donald Trump refers to him often, because of his terrorist policies, which the President has revived. And McKinley made the United States the industrial wonder of the world, as Donald Trump is doing. And McKinley understood the importance of the Western Hemisphere, as Trump does.

McKinley was assassinated at a Pan-American Exposition.

McKinley had continued the American system tradition of Abraham Lincoln, and both of those presidents represented everything the British Empire and the City of London feared. McKinley was assassinated in 1901, but he was not the only leader during that period who was assassinated.

In 1894, the president of France was stabbed. In 1897, the Spanish prime minister was shot. In 1898, the empress of Austria was stabbed. 1900, the king of Italy shot. And then in 1901, McKinley shot. They were all killed by anarchists.

Now, Great Britain was notorious for safe-housing anarchist movements and the assassins they spawned, which Promethean Action’s e-book, ‘It’s the British Who Murder Our Presidents’ documents.

Now, go back to Saturday’s attempt.

Whatever else emerges, it’s clear that Cole operated in a climate of hatred for the man he targeted, just as those anarchists operated over a century ago. And it’s no small irony that many of the guests in attendance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner represented the very press who helped construct that climate.

You see it in the newspaper and the social media headlines:Trump is an “authoritarian”, or he’s a “pedophile”. Now, you also have a more diplomatic version, like members of the House of Lords who warn that Trump has, quote, turbocharged the disruption of the international order.

But whatever the temperature scale of the rhetoric, it all comes from the same starting point: What Donald Trump is doing is threatening their system. In 125 years, no president has come this close to dismantling the imperial architecture.

President Trump has thrown free trade out the window. He’s threatening the power and independence of the Federal Reserve. He is closing off the strategic choke points like the Strait of Hormuz. He’s replacing London’s shipping insurance racket. He’s sanctioning their offshore dirty money operations. And he’s pulling the plug on NATO. That’s what’s behind President Trump’s statement after the attack on Saturday.

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“You take a look at what’s happened to some of our greatest presidents, and it doesn’t happen to people that don’t do anything, and it’s not going to deter me.”

Susan Kokinda: That’s a president who knows he’s making history. And so do we.

Promethean Action will keep you on the stage of history as this battle between the American system and the British system unfolds. So if you want to be equipped with the strategy you need to be part of this fight, subscribe to our free newsletter. Because the enemy understands it too, which is why King Charles is in Washington.

The Empire knows what’s at stake. Here’s what Reuters is counting on: “King Charles on US Mission to Bolster UK’s Special Relationship with Royalist Trump”.

They’re counting on the continuation of the soft power relationship that the Monarchy has cultivated with presidents for 70 years. Like the one Susan Page, the author of the just published book, ‘The Queen and Her Presidents, The Hidden Hand That Shaped History’, describes.

She says:

“On her first trip to the United States as a sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II so charmed President Dwight Eisenhower that she managed to mend a breach between their two countries over the 1956 Suez Crisis.”

Now, Suez was the last time a US president seriously and openly challenged the Empire. When France and Britain moved to seize the canal in 1956, Eisenhower told them to stop, and he threatened to crash the British pound. They stopped.

And it was the moment Britain discovered it no longer had independent power and it had to rely on manipulating the United States instead. From then on, it relied on soft power to direct the United States. And Page’s new book makes clear that it was Queen Elizabeth, herself who wielded that power.

Here’s Page’s description in a recent interview:

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Susan Page: So almost every day she would get briefing papers. Every week, she would get top secret intelligence documents.

And so over the period of decades, she was as informed about intelligence issues around the world as any other person over a longer period of time than any leader and even over issues, say, contingency plans for a nuclear war.

Susan Kokinda: This is not a figurehead. Queen Elizabeth got top secret intelligence briefings every day for 70 years.

She was in on the nuclear war contingency plans. And you can bet she had the full take on the Five Eyes intelligence operation. And she used it.

Page describes how the personal relationship between Elizabeth and Ronald Reagan contributed to Reagan’s decision to support Great Britain in the Malvinas Islands Crisis with Argentina, despite opposition from some of his advisors. Elizabeth was heeding Winston Churchill’s advice, quote, “Stay close to the Americans,” unquote. And it worked – until Donald Trump came to town.

And again, in that PBS interview, Page spills the beans.

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PBS Host: You report that a senior British official described the Queen wearing the Obama brooch on the day of President Trump’s arrival as “A silent act of resistance”. That is a striking claim for a monarch who was really studied in neutrality.

Susan Page: A rare example of that. But this was a brooch that Michelle Obama had given her. She had worn it only once, that was for the reciprocal dinner with the Obamas.

For seven years, she had not been seen in public. Then, on the day that President Trump arrives in England, she is in a formal meeting with some religious leaders, and she’s wearing it. And I think those close to her told me there was no other way to interpret that, but to interpret it as a statement of resistance to Trump and a statement of support for President Obama, with whom she was actually quite close.

Susan Kokinda: The next day, during that visit to London, President Trump broke royal etiquette and walked ahead of the Queen.

This is the backstory that you have to remember while you watch the pomp and circumstance over the next several days, because soft power and ceremony is not going to undo the hard power, which Donald Trump has taken to the British-created Postwar Liberal Order, and the House of Lords just admitted it.

Last week, Chatham House premiered a new report published by the British House of Lords International Relations and Defense Committee entitled, “Adjusting to New Realities, Rebalancing the UK-US Partnership”.

Now, that committee is chaired by Lord Robertson, who was the former NATO General Secretary, and it includes Lord Kim Darroch, whose relationship to Donald Trump tells you everything.

Then-Sir Kim Darroch was Britain’s Ambassador to Washington in Trump’s first term, until 2019, when his cables calling the Trump administration “inept and insecure” were leaked. Those cables also boasted of the networks he cultivated in Washington, as he flooded the zone with anti-Trump policies.

Trump demanded his removal, and he resigned. Four months later, the British establishment made him a lord. Now he’s on the Committee, figuring out how to manage relations with a Trump-led United States.

And at the Chatham House panel releasing the House of Lords report, Darroch made clear what was at stake. First, he described how Britain depends on the Postwar Order.

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Lord Darroch: There is, as Lord Robertson said in his introduction, a US retreat from what is commonly called the “Rules-Based International Order”, which broadly defined is the system of institutions and rules set up after the Second World War to manage relations between states, to promote prosperity, and to prevent conflict.

And as a medium-sized power with an open economy and a history of supporting free trade, we in the UK have found that system has suited us well. But it looks to us that increasingly America, Americans are taking a different view.

Susan Kokinda: “Suited us quite well.” That’s an understatement. And in the House of Lords report itself, Lord McDonald made clear that that system, which suits the British quite well, doesn’t work without the United States. He said, “There is no credible law without effective enforcement.”

And on the international stage, there is no effective enforcement without the United States. Then back to Lord Darroch, he delivered the indictment: that it is Donald Trump’s United States which has abandoned this Postwar architecture.

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Lord Darroch: There’s also, one could argue – and Lord Robertson, again mentioned this in his introduction – a quite clear disdain for, disregard for international law, as demonstrated recently by the military actions in Venezuela and Iran.

And in some ways, American foreign policy seems to be moving back to an older tradition that is more nationalist.

Susan Kokinda: That "older, more nationalistic tradition" was last fully exercised when William McKinley was president. The fear that this is going to become permanent runs through every page of the report. If Trump has two more years to consolidate, the change may be irreversible. They are racing the clock and they know it.

So while you’re watching the pomp and circumstance this week, remember this: The Monarchy was never a figurehead. It was a fully intelligence-briefed operation tasked with protecting the Postwar Order. The hidden hand isn’t really hidden, anymore.

Donald Trump is dismantling that order and no amount of soft power or ceremony is going to change that. And as the President said after the assassination attempt, it’s the ones who are most impactful and who change history that they go after.

Promethean Action understands that and we understand that Donald Trump can’t do it alone. The more people who are on the stage of history with the President, the sooner we win this fight. You can join Promethean Action as a supporting member or a contributor and become part of that.

So this has been your Monday Brief. Thanks for watching.