The American mainstream does not want to let go of the power it has built up with a lot of energy and money over many years. Donald Trump, on the other hand, learned from the mistakes of his previous presidency and promised that if he wins the presidential election, he will disrupt them, he is planning major reforms and purges, but his opponents would prevent this at any cost – László Földi, a former intelligence officer and secret service expert, pointed out to hirado.hu after the assassination attempt on Trump.
– Do you think the team responsible for protecting Trump made a mistake?
– Since I was not a trained member of a security system, I am speculating just like everyone else, but this 130 meter distance is within the security zone. The attacker did not solve the problem of hiding, since there were security people on the other roofs as well, whose job it is to constantly scan the area, so it could not go unnoticed that someone was up there, and it doesn’t matter if they have an umbrella or a weapon , the danger of a potential attack must be averted. Obviously, a thorough investigation could clarify whether they made a mistake and, if so, whether they made a mistake consciously or not. It is too early to draw any conclusions, for now we can only make hypotheses.
– Within a short period of time, two similar attacks took place, Robert Fico was shot and they tried to kill Donald Trump.
– This is where the opposition incited by those at the political level leads. People like order, they understand order, they can function in order. In predictable processes, they can separate the right from the unjust, the good from the bad. This is not given today in seemingly civilized countries. They unleash masses of other cultures on the existing culture, they create wars in different parts of the Earth. These processes create a psychological situation in which people, looking for a way out of the confusion, can even go in the direction of violence of their own choosing. It is clear that the perpetrators who seek to take human life are psychologically burdened. The United States has had assassinations before, Abraham Lincoln, John Fitzgerald Kennedy were assassinated, and Ronald Reagan was injured when he was shot but survived the attack. But at that time, regardless of whether they were democrat or republican sympathizers, people uniformly rejected the violence and treated the victim as a victim, but now there are people who mourn and wail because the assassination failed.
– Even after the attack on Fico, some people on internet forums demanded the end of the assassination.
“There are two reasons for this.” The responsibility of politics is clear, as people see that one or the other party is capable of anything to gain or preserve power. And the other is that they can do it anonymously on the Internet by calling for murder. In the past, what appeared in the press was analyzed and investigated by the editorial offices, it was not possible to mix things up, especially not to threaten or incite murder, because there was control over the news. The internet is also part of creating chaos.
– Both the Slovak and the American shooter were in the news as a lone perpetrator.
– There is no “lone assassin” theory. Assassinations can also be committed by those who do not consult with anyone, but there is a political atmosphere behind it that incites people, and a psychologically burdened person who is prone to such things may interpret it as having been called upon, so he must go, and he will fight this battle as a warrior, and then the assassinations are coming.
Could this be a warning sign for the Hungarian authorities to pay even more attention to security?
– On the one hand, there is no 100% protection, because if real profit is chosen to carry out the assassination, he will make the minimum mistake, using the example from chess, he always has the white piece, he is the initiator. The defense is always at a disadvantage compared to the attacking side, because it chooses the location, the time, and the circumstances. He can prepare himself when the event is announced, at which the given politician will appear. You can place your devices on site even before the inspection, which is why I say that there is no 100% protection, but at the same time it should be noted that protection is not an ad hoc institutional system, it is not about that we have to act more strictly now than before. Security is always tight. Here you always have to pay attention, you have to think about the fact that an attack can happen at any time, even if there are no signs of it. In various parts of the world there are privileged protected persons, such as the president of the United States, the president of Russia or the prime minister of Israel, and I think Viktor Orbán also belongs here for many reasons. Such persons should receive special protection as they have individual attack surfaces compared to other political elite figures. In their case, there is no occasional strong and weak defensive position. You always have to be strong, you always have to act as if they are going to assassinate you the next moment. In addition, the attitude of the protected person is also authoritative. An important factor is how willing he is to subject himself to the inconveniences that come with the pursuit of 100% protection, since he is also a person who can think that he has the right to walk around, go to the crowd to shake hands, which Fico also did, while this was not prepared.
– The Pope also made the personnel responsible for his protection in our country sweat because he improvised a lot during the program.
– Yes, the cooperation of the protected person can strengthen or weaken the protection. Those providing protection can be as well prepared as they can be, if the protected person suddenly slips out of the clutches of the protection and starts an independent action. Even the opponent, who is aware of how the defense works, does not count on this, because he studies it and tries to find a gap within it. It is rarely possible, as happened in the case of Fico, that the attacker was able to get so close to him, who by the way has already appeared at several events with a weapon, but only now did the ideal moment come for him. Everything came together from the point of view of the opponent who was able to pull the trigger.
“Can’t the politician go to his sympathizers today?”
“A lot of things can’t be done today, unfortunately.”
“Can we expect more such events?”
– Unfortunately yes. The problem is that the baseline does not change. There have always been, are and will be assassins in the world. Nowadays, in order to win in politics, nothing is sacred, gentlemanly solutions have disappeared, there is no mercy. We live in a constant war, which is not necessarily accompanied by shootings. Our everyday life appears in the midst of an abnormal world. Well, how could it be assumed that these will continue. Fortunately, most of humanity is normal, regardless of whether it doesn’t look like it, the silent majority is not, but we hear the loud ones “thanks” to the Internet and the press. I told my colleagues many times in the past, and I still think so today, if the press picks up on these cases as well, since a person prone to such actions is willing to do a lot in order to get into the news. Most of the secret services do not say what attack attempts they have repelled, even though there are plenty of them, not only in America or Slovakia, but in many places. When the secret services and the defense systems prevent and take down the assassination attempt in an operational way, then there is silence, and that is right. The events picked up by the press, on the other hand, represent another basis for a subsequent assassination.
“Is there a danger that they will attack Trump’s life again?”
– In the case of Trump, it is not only worth paying attention to the danger of whether such a crime can be committed against him or not, since whether he is elected or not, a civil war situation may arise, as the existing mainstream does not want to let go of the power it has built up with a lot of energy and money over many years . Trump, on the other hand, learned from the mistakes of his previous presidency and promised to distract them, planning major transformations and cleansing, but his opponents would prevent this at any cost. Due to degenerate attempts at provocation, the Americans may fall for each other. The United States has such a great influence on the world that whatever happens there, pros and cons, will be reflected in the world, if there was a civil war there, it would stir up emotions here in Europe as well.
– Many trust that Trump will win the election and end the war raging in our neighborhood. Would you be able to do that?
– In America, the country of democracy, power is extremely centralized. It all depends on the president. There, the president of the republic is not the commander-in-chief of the army, as in Hungary, for example, everything is in one hand there. Interestingly, no one has yet gotten nervous because of how concentrated power is there. The American president, as the commander-in-chief of the army, can say that we have laid down our weapons and that’s it. Whether the general staff or NATO’s American military leadership obeys this or not is another question. But he can say that gentlemen, that’s it, there is no NATO attack, there is no Russian military issue, many of us who are waiting for Trump’s victory trust this.
– Would Trump also stop the European leaders in war psychosis?
“They don’t stop now because the USA tells them to do it, they are puppets.” European countries do not represent power, but the United States does, the European elite is made up of vulnerable puppets, if they were serious politicians, they would create order in Europe themselves and would not wait for America to make order as a babysitter. Europe has fallen in terms of its political elite – respect for the very few exceptions – and they are not fit to lead Europe, to represent an independent policy, they only know how to carry out the orders of the big ones like a servant boy or a servant girl, so we hope that the next president will have the he will have orders that there should be no war.
– To what extent can Trump be considered an opponent of the mainstream elite?
– In the economic structure of the United States, there is no difference between one side and the other. The American economy has been built on the military industry for the past hundred years. Consequently, it doesn’t matter which side someone is on, Democrat or Republican, whatever industry or business they deal with, they are tied to this fund. The economy is based on the military industry, and each of its actors depends on it. The question is not whether Trump would fundamentally do something different, but whether he would do the same to others? Even this would be a positive thing, because those who are in power now, I can’t decipher why, but they are interested in destruction. Another group might be interested in construction and development and follow a different system. From the point of view of the military industry, the Democrats incite war, and during Trump’s time they announced a 2 percent contribution of the GDP of NATO member states. According to Republicans, the military industry should not be sustained by wars, but by selling weapons to the federal system. Both sides talk about the same thing, represent the same interest, feed from the same source, only the method is different. Trump’s method is more favorable from the point of view of peace, because the trader wants to sell and not kill.
– What do you think of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s peace mission?
– As the successive president of the European Union, he announced that it is in the interest of the European Union to steer the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in a peaceful direction, and he is right about that. He went to those concerned with whom he can seriously discuss this. He does not negotiate on behalf of the union, but conducts a survey to be prepared, so he cannot reach an agreement with anyone, because he does not have the authority to do so, but he is the first leader who went to all parties. He listened to Moscow with the same enthusiasm as Kiev, then he also went to China, because the Chinese have been trying for a long time to make proposals in the direction of peace, and then he went to America, because it depends on Washington whether there is peace or war. He orchestrated this perfectly. This is what diplomacy is about, no one has ever done this before, while everyone has learned the rules of diplomacy, but they don’t apply it because they are only executors. Now the prime minister has prepared a material, he is submitting it to the Brussels council, they are expected to reject it, but Viktor Orbán will do his job. That’s it.
– Viktor Orbán is the prime minister of a small country, yet he often steps onto the big stage of world politics.
“Sizes don’t mean anything.” There is no big or small, smart or stupid. If the prime minister of Hungary with a population of ten million has as much sense as the others do not, then it should not be seen that it is a small country, but that it finally has an intelligent and creative political leader. Let’s look at the first man of the United States, who is the president of a powerful country, but he may not even remember what he did yesterday.
