Trump Shooting Breakdown (From a Former Undercover Agent) – Secret Service’s Mistakes, Trump’s Mindset and Lessons for Business Leaders | Elite Performance Podcast #55

 00:00:00:01 - 00:00:08:10
News:
It was an assassination attempt on former president and presidential candidate Donald Trump. We continue to cover the attempted assassination of former President.
Trump assassination attempt.

00:00:08:10 - 00:00:18:01
Itamar Marani
That doesn't sound like a sniper rifle. Just the cadence of the shooting of the that's too close to be a sniper rifle.

00:00:18:01 - 00:00:30:02
Alex De Fina
My assumption would be that it would be a small caliber either like a .22 or maybe like a .223 or .556. Certainly nothing like a f300 win mag or .308.

00:00:30:07 - 00:00:38:12
Itamar Marani
What that says is that he wasn't that far away. They didn't actually secure a perimeter. That taking into account all these threats.

00:00:38:16 - 00:00:45:07
Alex De Fina
If you spend your entire career for a singular event, which may or may not happen, could you almost lose some of that sharpness?

00:00:45:12 - 00:01:07:12
Itamar Marani
There's a difference between having done the training and constantly training, saying Sharp. Donald Trump, I don't know his politics or the agendas. Just looking at the individual. He had just gotten shot and his first reaction was to show, I'm still a savage. I'm all good. That's a very strong individual. Welcome to today's episode, everyone. Today, we're doing something different.

00:01:07:15 - 00:01:24:20
Itamar Marani
Former President Donald Trump just survived an assassination attempt. And we're going to break down a couple of things. First off, what happened there? On a technical perspective, what was the good with the bad? I'll share my perspective with someone who actually worked in the federal agencies in other countries and see what went well there, what didn't, what could have been prevented.

00:01:24:22 - 00:01:48:02
Itamar Marani
And then something else I want to talk about is his mindset. It was very interesting to see how he conducted himself the moment during the firing and right afterwards. And there's a lot to say there about the good and also the bad. There's a combination there, which was very interesting. And I want to bring up my perspective. With that said, I am not going to talk anything about politics itself.

00:01:48:02 - 00:02:10:20
Itamar Marani
I don't actually follow the American politics or the actual issues. Who's running for what? Who's saying what? I don't know. Their agendas. It's not something that's of my interest. So we're not going to talk about that. With that, I think we're also going to get into a little bit about why certain conspiracy theories don't make sense. And I can also share my perspective of someone from the inside about that and that I want to welcome Alex Taylor coming on now.

00:02:10:22 - 00:02:30:01
Itamar Marani
Thank you for being here. Alex is raising the Trump fist of triumph. So before we get into just a little bit of context, for me, I was never part of our Secret Service. However, I trained a lot with our Secret Service guys because there were situations where I would have to double up and do those kind of things, those kind of details.

00:02:30:01 - 00:02:51:05
Itamar Marani
That's called. So I know how they operate. I know that the majority of the protocols are still relevant back then. And also I went through the exact same school we went through different courses, but went through the exact same school together. So there's a lot of overlap there. On a secondary note, Alex, a pretty extensive hobby, let's call it with weapons and everything to do in between.

00:02:51:07 - 00:03:07:17
Itamar Marani
I think you also have a very interesting perspective on Joe. So I'll say this all open it up. The first thing that struck me as very interesting when I just saw the video and before they said they caught the gunman or whatever it may be, that doesn't sound like a sniper rifle. Just the cadence of the shooting. That's too close to be a sniper rifle.

00:03:07:18 - 00:03:25:22
Itamar Marani
So how come they didn't secure the perimeter that close? There was like a meeting. Somebody had to have a high ground. Maybe there was a hill next to the convention or whatever it may be. And to me, that immediately sounded very odd, just the cadence of that shooting, that that was not a sniper rifle of somebody probably with like a regular M4 plus a sharpshooting lens of some sort.

00:03:26:00 - 00:03:33:03
Itamar Marani
I just want to hear, like from your perspective, what was that for you when you heard it? Did you actually, I think, have more experience with weapons that I do now?

00:03:33:05 - 00:04:02:18
Alex De Fina
Yeah. Again, I'm not certainly no ballistics expert, but my assumption would be that it would be a small caliber other like a 22 or maybe like a two, two, three or five, five, six, certainly nothing like a 300 mag or a three are white because I don't think there'd be much left of his ear or side of his head because there's a large caliber sniper rifle round.

00:04:02:20 - 00:04:07:14
Alex De Fina
That would be my initial assumption. Assistant would be 22. Also, that could be three.

00:04:07:16 - 00:04:29:14
Itamar Marani
So apologies for the dark laughter. Just for context. When you have the really let's call this for simple language, the very strong sniper weapons, did, if they hit something, they blow it off like they blow off limbs. So it's something that is going to puncture you a little bit, But they would really blow off and blow off like an entire skull.

00:04:29:16 - 00:04:53:01
Itamar Marani
And also the cadences, those usually aren't semi-automatic. The gun that he was firing. You could hear that it was a semi-automatic. The burst went through and it also wasn't bomb weight recharged, but it was decorative. And you could hear that it was somebody with a trigger finger that was controlling the pace of the fire. That wasn't limited, again, by having to recharge.

00:04:53:03 - 00:05:18:15
Itamar Marani
So what that says is that he wasn't that far away. And what that says is that they didn't actually secure a perimeter. That taking into account all these threats, which means that either the person who authorized the convention to be there did a poor job or the person who secured the perimeter after they said this is a place we're going to have a convention, did a poor job, and it ended up being that's exactly what happened.

00:05:18:16 - 00:05:35:19
Itamar Marani
There was a there was a rooftop there that person had to climb onto. So first off, I don't know whose fault that was, so to speak. The person who authorized it or the person who swooped it. But it's definitely the person who sweeps that. And then it possibly might also have been the person that authorized it, because he might have actually given like an area like, you're going to authorize this place.

00:05:35:19 - 00:05:45:20
Itamar Marani
But this is a place you have to secure this rooftop. But they just didn't do that. That's point one. I kind of want to talk about this. Does that make sense?

00:05:45:22 - 00:06:21:02
Alex De Fina
Yeah. From a preparation perspective, doing this VIP protection sort of work, obviously, if if you know that the protect protected the principal, the important person is going to be somewhere, there might be a lot of time to prepare, fully assess the area, what areas down, etc.. I don't know how far in advance this this rally was planned. Trump does strike me as being a bit more of a off the cuff kind of politician.

00:06:21:02 - 00:06:36:11
Alex De Fina
He might just kind of make up the schedule on the fly. Do you think that might be one of the contributing factors in that perhaps there was just a limited planning and prep time for Secret Service?

00:06:36:12 - 00:07:01:12
Itamar Marani
Possible. It's a possibility, of course, And I don't know the details of how sporadic he is, but for whatever reason, I doubt that. I think this is one of those things where when you analyze it, there's a really, really high level of risk and he's out in the open. It's obviously he's a prolific figure. He's obviously a high target, whatever it may be.

00:07:01:14 - 00:07:27:03
Itamar Marani
And I would be very surprised if he has the allowances to just do things like that sporadically. So here's the interesting thing. I don't know if this is true for the the American it's called Secret Service. So and again, for context, I was in the Israeli agency. What's interesting is that when you work in the public sector, so you're actually securing a minister of the prime minister, whatever it may be.

00:07:27:05 - 00:07:46:22
Itamar Marani
Even those like let's call a 20 year old, 30 year old kids that are doing that, the heads of those security, they have, say, over the ministers or the prime minister in certain areas, they have a safety of the minister like this. And you to go through that door, not that door. The minister actually has to listen to them when it comes to certain safety regulations actually have power over him, which most people don't recognize.

00:07:47:00 - 00:08:05:17
Itamar Marani
So it's very different in the in the private sector. Like if the billionaire just tells you, hey, we're going to have a helicopter. You can't tell him, no, this fired. But the way that it works in the public sector, again, I'm not sure this is the state, but the way that works in that is that they actually have power to say no if it's too high of a risk, which also kind of brings me to my second point.

00:08:05:17 - 00:08:28:14
Itamar Marani
What was interesting is that I think the first reaction they had was a very sharp when they all covered him, the immunity, basically the shield him with their bodies. What happened afterwards was very surprising to me. What I expected was that someone's going to grab Trump by the back of the head. So he keeps his head low, lower him, shield him, and just forcefully move him like a puppet.

00:08:28:16 - 00:08:47:12
Itamar Marani
Like we're in control now. You have no control over this. You're going to follow us. I'm going to take you in the way that we need to take you. And you could see that the guys around him were just perhaps it was just and again, I don't want to discredit any of the guys who it's a high tension situation, but perhaps they were a bit overtaken by the situation by the moment.

00:08:47:13 - 00:09:03:13
Itamar Marani
But they all seem to just kind of be a bit hesitant there and a bit like, what do you want to do, sir? The fact that he was able to pop his head out and put his hand up and all that phenomenal media for him, he looks really strong. But it was shocking to me that they allowed that to happen.

00:09:03:15 - 00:09:13:10
Itamar Marani
That doesn't make sense from a tactical perspective. There was even I remember seeing the video of one of the secret Asian guys he sees. Trump says he's trying to basically put his hand between Trump and the rest of the world.

00:09:13:12 - 00:09:14:02
Alex De Fina
Yeah.

00:09:14:04 - 00:09:34:17
Itamar Marani
Yeah. The cover with his hand, instead of saying someone's going to grab him by the back of the head, put his head down and just walk him, like with all in a unit, a shell around him. So there were some definite professional mishaps there. Any questions around that? First, before I consider the figure, I want to just talk from a place where I understand this.

00:09:34:20 - 00:09:38:09
Itamar Marani
It's a bit different. Yeah.

00:09:38:11 - 00:10:05:07
Alex De Fina
What you said would be my assumption or situation as well. I would feel good. The second that they need to leap into action, the principal desires come right down the totem pole and it's, you know, we take over and get you off the x. From a mindset perspective, I couldn't help but think of a question to to ask you whether or not it's relevant to this particular point.

00:10:05:09 - 00:10:47:17
Alex De Fina
Americans Secret Service have always fascinated me. If I think about the amount of training, resourcing that goes into something where someone theoretically could spend. I think the last assassination attempt was 81. I'm on Reagan, but it's been a long time since the US President has has to have had an assassination attempt. Which means that there's secret Service people who've spent essentially their entire career doing all the planning, preparation, training, etcetera, and never once actually had to to use it in a serious situation like this.

00:10:47:18 - 00:11:10:13
Alex De Fina
Could there be a situation that perhaps some of those peculiar situation, like with too much like Trump is sort of calling the shots here? You know, I remember my shoes on. Could there be a situation that the almost become a bit sort of rusty? I don't take that. I don't mean that into that constantly iterating and improving the skills.

00:11:10:13 - 00:11:26:23
Alex De Fina
But I mean, if you spend your entire career for a singular event, which may or may not happen, could you almost kind of lose some of that sharpness that when it actually does happen, you're almost caught by surprise a little bit?

00:11:27:01 - 00:11:46:09
Itamar Marani
It could be. So I think what that would depend on is training protocols. Now, the training and again, I can't speak to the American secret Service, but the one back home, the training is very intense. If you do that training and there were certain protocols that you had to do training once every month, that was a one day we called it.

00:11:46:09 - 00:12:05:10
Itamar Marani
And you have to do every 40th, do a three day on top of doing a yearly refresher. And the other pressure was longer. Those trainings kept you sharp. They kept you very aggressive. You were very able to take drop at a pin point and get to it. And that was the whole point of it was basically your your basic training, let's call it that covered all the technical aspects of the job.

00:12:05:12 - 00:12:30:05
Itamar Marani
And there were things that were still there on day to day to create these mental models. If this happens, that happens. All these tabletop drills and those trainings, The point of them was to help you be able to switch back, flip that switch, sorry, and really go into going work when you need to. And on top of that, I would assume these Secret Service agents all also like former Army people in the U.S. military and they have seen combat.

00:12:30:05 - 00:12:59:16
Itamar Marani
I'm going to assume that they have a big pool to draw from after Afghanistan, Iraq and so on. I, I don't know. That's the interesting part about it. The fact that I think there's some kind of correlation here where there are some lapses in that place, it should have been an option. That should have been a possibility. First off, then the reaction and also that kind of allowing Trump to just stand up and put his hand up and great media for him was not very professional.

00:12:59:18 - 00:13:17:14
Itamar Marani
I think we had a saying in the agency that the only guaranteed way to come out of an attack unharmed. The only guaranteed way is to avoid it altogether. And that's the thing. Somebody didn't do that. There's different circles of defense. So the first circle is just around Trump himself, and there's a second, third and fourth circle and so on.

00:13:17:14 - 00:13:39:13
Itamar Marani
And you go to have expanded hours until it's actually just the intelligence and the and I'll get to that point in a second because intelligence couldn't have worked on. Explain why in a second. But whoever figured out the plan for this place, if they made a mistake, they just didn't cover a place that obviously had this potential.

00:13:39:15 - 00:14:19:04
Alex De Fina
Yeah. If if it I think the news in the US just starting to report the shooter's name, whether that's accurate or not. Now, probably that 20 years old. If a 20 year old assuming they just as accurate, they really don't have decades of, you know, either reconnaissance or special forces training. If they'd been able to get onto a rooftop with a weapon and Secret Service weren't able to previously mitigate that from happening, certainly some questions remain unanswered in terms of how they did in that position.

00:14:19:06 - 00:14:37:09
Itamar Marani
All right. So let's talk about it. This is probably where people are going to out. It's a conspiracy. Like somebody put him up there, blah, blah, blah, blah. The Secret Service must have known. Mm hmm. So there's a difference between what we call the a planned attack and a spontaneous attack. Planned attacks are something where you have. Let's go like ISIS.

00:14:37:11 - 00:15:04:02
Itamar Marani
They come out and they say, we actually did this. We were in charge of it. That would be a big shitstorm because that means that the outermost ring of the defense intelligence failed intelligence, the FBI or the CIA, they failed to pick this up. That would be a big problem because, I mean, they didn't do their job. However, if there's a spontaneous attacker, a 20 year old, you know, he sees it on the news, he doesn't like Trump for whatever reason, he decides I'm going to do something about it.

00:15:04:04 - 00:15:26:13
Itamar Marani
You can't do anything about those things as far as intelligence. They're so unpredictable. They oftentimes the spontaneous attacker is much more dangerous than the actual terrorist organization doing something because it's unpredictable. There's no way you can intercept the wires or whatever it may be. So before people jump and say, oh, if he was a 20 year old, then it's definitely somebody put him up there.

00:15:26:13 - 00:15:45:13
Itamar Marani
It's actually could be the opposite because he was a 20 year old, maybe with no record, no, whatever it may be, they couldn't have anticipated it as we talked about this earlier, that Hanlon's razor that I never attribute to malice, that which is adequately explained by stupidity or negligence, it could have been just that. It's not that there's a big conspiracy to push this person forward.

00:15:45:15 - 00:16:06:10
Itamar Marani
It's because he was spontaneous attacker. It was not possible to forecast this. He never declared that he's going to do this. He wasn't a part of ISIS, whatever it may be. He was a 20 year old who had access to guns, which is pretty easy apparently in some states. And that's what he did. But it doesn't mean there's a conspiracy that people propped him up there.

00:16:06:12 - 00:16:12:02
Itamar Marani
Does that make sense, this difference in like a spontaneous and an organized attack and why they're so different?

00:16:12:04 - 00:16:46:15
Alex De Fina
Absolutely. I, I think that the grander the conspiracy, multiple people planning preparation, the less likely it is to be true. So yeah I totally understand that the I think one thing this whole thing to keep in mind at this stage as well is that there's probably a different resourcing of the Secret Service that a former president receives even or a candidate receives to a sitting president.

00:16:46:17 - 00:17:00:20
Alex De Fina
So from understanding it, they get some Secret Service detail. But the level of Secret Service agents and resources, I would assume, is probably different to the to what Biden would receive.

00:17:00:22 - 00:17:24:13
Itamar Marani
I'm not sure about that, especially because you've got a former president. So what happens? From what I've understood it again, the states and the part of that agency is that the president gets his Secret Service group and a lot of times they come with him to retirement. The kid gets to pick the select few that he wants to take with him because he still gets service afterwards, like the guys that were protecting Clinton after Clinton was out of office, they stayed with him.

00:17:24:15 - 00:17:47:01
Itamar Marani
Same with Bush. So with that logic, it means that the guys that were with Trump when he was president are still with him today. And on top of that, there are I would be very surprised if it's just across the board, the same thing, if that United States Secret Service, the FBI decided, you know what? Hillary Clinton needs the same level of protection as Donald Trump.

00:17:47:03 - 00:18:05:23
Itamar Marani
I would be surprised if that was the case. Obviously, you probably recognize there are there is a lot of threats. There's a lot of noise around Trump. So we do need to make sure that he's secure, like and under threat target. So in again, my previous line of work that when certain ministers, they pop off the grid, go send in a specific threat against them or whatever it may be.

00:18:06:01 - 00:18:28:10
Itamar Marani
Security gets beefed up. So it's not just across the board. This is how we do things. There is both. It's called their level of notoriety, period. If they're a minister or prime minister is you call a vice minister, whatever it may be. But there's also their specific threats against that individual and all that gets taken into account.

00:18:28:12 - 00:19:18:09
Alex De Fina
From the I mean, there's this there's a lot of conspiracies I can foresee popping up even just from a technical capabilities perspective. So, for example, I've got a friend in Australia is a professional hunter, and he uses small, smallish drones with with thermals to locate pests, pigs or wild dogs. So what would you say to someone? Say, I said, you know, if I've got a friend who's a civilian in Australia who can have access to this kind of technology, surely the Secret Service would just have similar technologies when any type of principal is under their care.

00:19:18:11 - 00:19:40:06
Alex De Fina
If they're in a open air environment with a drone overhead with thermals, and they kind of say, well, the principal is here, there's a group of people in in, in proximity to that person. We know about those people. Oh, what's what's this little person crawling across the rooftop over here that we didn't previously know about? What would you say to people who would come up with questions like that?

00:19:40:06 - 00:19:51:18
Alex De Fina
And so surely they would have technical technological capabilities that would have seen this coming. Do it again. It could be an opportunity or just incompetency.

00:19:51:20 - 00:20:11:13
Itamar Marani
It's it doesn't have to be and comes across as be resources to the challenging thing about working with someone who's in the not in the offensive line but on the defensive sector, so to speak. You're not you're not hey, you're going out on hits across the world and trying to take down bad guys, but you're actually protecting is there's a certain fatigue that sets in.

00:20:11:18 - 00:20:29:08
Itamar Marani
You have to be on alert 24/7, 365 all the time when you're going on the attack. You know, you need to be sharp for that one. Let's call it a day. Plus that one hour that you're really on. It's a very different thing when you're always protecting. And it could just be, you know, fatigue there on the campaign trail.

00:20:29:14 - 00:20:44:09
Itamar Marani
And apparently, like Trump, from what I've heard, I think from Dana White, he was like, that guy doesn't sleep. And I do know the are like I remember stories from other guys that work with our ministers. I mean, some of these guys, it was really challenging to work with. You're just exhausted just on sleep. They're animals. They're like, it's amazing.

00:20:44:10 - 00:21:03:19
Itamar Marani
They have energy. That's crazy. They're 60 years old and the way they sleep 4 hours a day and they go like all night, they're in meetings, they're doing things. And it's just a very challenging situation for the service because their shifts aren't meant to be like that. But it's just what happens. So it could be that, it could be lack of resources, like we might have had three drones on there.

00:21:03:19 - 00:21:20:03
Itamar Marani
But at that time, again, just in that specific 15 minute window, they weren't looking at that rooftop because somebody, again, perhaps in the plant then say, that's a place that we need ice 24 seven That is a danger zone that at all times there has to be out of there. Somebody might have failed to actually write that down.

00:21:20:08 - 00:21:46:00
Itamar Marani
So they were just scouring seven other places all the time. And that's like, I don't know how many people have actually watched, actually sat in front of CCTV. Let's hope for lack of a better word, it's it's challenging to sit and be alert. The CCTV is it's very challenging as a tool to actually stop things from happening. It's usually more of an investigative tool when after we say, I've got a security camera, let's see what's happening.

00:21:46:02 - 00:22:05:16
Itamar Marani
But for someone to stay alert on like a drone or whatever it may be for, and again, this isn't just one rally. This is for the whole campaign trail, whatever it may be. It was just human error in there. And kind of going back to what you said about the conspiracies, it's it's hard to pull that kind of thing off, sort of that way.

00:22:05:18 - 00:22:22:12
Itamar Marani
You have to have so many moving parts. And if we're saying that you can't, it's challenging on one hand to say the government is so incompetent they can't make these things happen. And then another and to say they're making these conspiracies happen, they're all together behind the scenes, making the hard stuff happen. And that's just a hard thing to say.

00:22:22:14 - 00:22:25:06
Itamar Marani
Both of them happen.

00:22:25:08 - 00:22:45:12
Alex De Fina
Yeah, that's what my question earlier was about. Sorry, sort of was it was a mindset aspect of even though I'm sure that these guys try these kinds of drills all the time. I think the difference for a Secret Service agent in training versus what we just experienced would be that when they're in training, they at some level they know that they're in training.

00:22:45:12 - 00:23:22:22
Alex De Fina
They can make it as realistic as possible and make it very stressful and sleep deprived, etc., etc.. But to some degree the still aware that is training for those Secret Service agents assigned to Trump every time they attend one of these rallies, the vehicle escorts, etc. If they've done this rodeo a thousand times and a thousand of a thousand times, it's just it's almost been boring to not, you know, a bunch of chatter and, you know, apart from a random drunk or mishap here or that nothing to this degree has happened prior.

00:23:23:00 - 00:23:45:20
Alex De Fina
Do you think that might lead to some of those reactions? It seems a little bit off that, you know, some of the agents say to sort of stall a little bit the fact of when they get to Trump, Trump seems to be calling the shots about when they sort of get off the X. Do you think that that might be attributed to why some of those reactions seemed a little bit slow or disconnected from what you'd otherwise expect?

00:23:45:22 - 00:24:01:23
Itamar Marani
Yes and no. That's the hard part. So what you're talking about is there's a kind of a lapse in operational tension, just mundane. It's a day to day. Yes. That would have made total sense for me if instead of, you know, closing the gap to him in 0.1 seconds, it took 0.3 because they need to wake up for a second.

00:24:02:01 - 00:24:22:04
Itamar Marani
It makes total sense. Totally understandable. The fact that it didn't snap to afterwards in control that the asset, the principal, whatever you want to call them and didn't actually control the situation. That was very odd. Like I would have fully understood and it would have made sense to like, of course, you can't expect that even the best of the best.

00:24:22:04 - 00:24:41:14
Itamar Marani
It's like they're on these campaign trails for all the time, you know, you're on end, whatever it may be, the results. And they weren't fully sharp, fully alert 100% of the time. That's not realistic. But the fact that once they were already switched on, so to speak, they didn't actually switch on. That's what was surprising. Again, I can fully understand it took them a bit longer to see what happened here.

00:24:41:14 - 00:24:56:14
Itamar Marani
What's that noise? Oh, well, we've got to get to Trump instead of saying, let's get to Trump immediately and sprint into it. But once that happened, once they had already like piled on to him, the fact that they'd let him up and he was showing his face and he was able to basically lift his hand, which again, great media for him.

00:24:56:16 - 00:25:04:01
Itamar Marani
It showed there was something there wasn't going right? Yes, yes and no.

00:25:04:03 - 00:25:22:20
Alex De Fina
For a Secret Service agent, literally your entire career is thinking about this moment. You know, if I was there when the JFK assassination happened, if I was dead my entire career as one focal point, which would be should there be a threat to the president? You know, obviously, they do a lot of stuff to those people saying to him, that's that's the number one job.

00:25:22:22 - 00:25:57:15
Alex De Fina
And I'm sure if they run the same drill as a simulated training experience, people would have been a little bit faster, a little bit stuffy, because it did appear to me that was a couple of agents who sort of went almost sort of freeze mode. And just kind of for a second, I wonder if that's playing out to some degree that if your entire focal point is for one very rare, unique, low probability event and all the Secret Service agents before you, it's never happened in their career, and then it actually happens that maybe some of that training kind of falls to the wayside.

00:25:57:15 - 00:26:21:16
Alex De Fina
And in your brain, it kind of scrambles a little bit. This is actually happening for real with the president. There's gunshots going off and obviously there's takeaways there for for business in life. That training can only prepare you to a certain degree. But when things go live and it's unplanned, it doesn't always go right.

00:26:21:18 - 00:26:25:14
Itamar Marani
When I want to challenge that a little bit, that's all right.

00:26:25:16 - 00:26:28:06
Alex De Fina
So it's so.

00:26:28:08 - 00:26:50:00
Itamar Marani
There's a difference between having done the training and constantly training and staying sharp. Those are two very different things. They're going to mutate, You know, like camp for two years is very different than you just even just doing it once a week every week for the rest of your life. As far as the sharpness and what that actually something that was happening in the agency as I was leaving it.

00:26:50:00 - 00:27:16:05
Itamar Marani
So I'm trying to make sure I can say what I what I want to say, that it's allowed. But basically there were incidents that didn't have a high magnitude of of impact, let's call it not obviously something like an assassination attempt, but something where there were some issues and they realized that the way these could have been resolved was not more a longer training upfront.

00:27:16:07 - 00:27:46:22
Itamar Marani
So actually qualify someone as an agent, but just more consistent reminders of, hey, you got to switch on, switch on, switch on. So what they actually built when I was an air marshal, they actually built a simulator of some sorts right next to inside the airport, inside the terminal where where people would gather, whatever it may be. And what they did there was they made sure that every day when you came in to work, you would switch on and that was the whole point of it.

00:27:46:22 - 00:28:06:18
Itamar Marani
The whole point of it wasn't to help you be more tactical, whatever it may be, it was just to change your mindset about same thing when we were operating abroad every day at the beginning of the day when we were doing a daily meeting, somebody had to come up with a mental model and their kind of example, Hey, someone's coming in with an AK from the right, someone throwing a bag that you know is a bomb from the left and somebody else is doing this.

00:28:06:19 - 00:28:30:23
Itamar Marani
The crowd of people protecting over here, what do you do? And it just forced you to wake up to that. Now, in the time of the agency, there were certain bosses that took it very seriously. And there was one guy who didn't even know he was a boss, so to speak, in that level. And I remember him and he was the kind of person who could see a situation like that happening where he just didn't keep his guys very sharp all the time.

00:28:31:01 - 00:28:50:23
Itamar Marani
So and then something we actually do, we talk a lot about that again in the arena, how to actually create mental models, understanding what's a high impact situation, what's not. We talked about risk, about the quantification of there's different levels of danger and how you can assess it, the amount of possible harm, the probability and the possibility when it's actually validated to these mental models or when they're just a waste.

00:28:51:01 - 00:29:06:03
Itamar Marani
But I do think there is a way to Yes, training will never be life. However, there's ways to make sure that you're prepared for when it is, and I think that's something we failed to do.

00:29:06:05 - 00:29:31:13
Alex De Fina
Have you heard the Joe Rogan joke about the There was a guy, I think during the Obama years, some deranged individual that made their way into the White House and they were in the investigation, actually found out this guy was arrested about two weeks beforehand for acting weird, just kind of loitering outside the White House somewhere, place to knock on his window.

00:29:31:13 - 00:30:00:09
Alex De Fina
He had a cache of weapons in the back of the car. He had like a pirate map with like an X drone over the White House. Like, wow, Almost comical. Yeah. That guy was arrested two weeks beforehand. Two weeks later, he's. He's free and he's scaled and rugged is great because he scaled the fence. Now, if you were to think what would happen if I tried to climb that White House fence, you publish, I would assume that some robot popped out of the grass and, like, zapped you with some kind of energy weapon.

00:30:00:11 - 00:30:30:11
Alex De Fina
So the fence still a lot of the fence still a lot bounds across the White House lawn still alive, gets the door is unlocked, opens the doors, the female, the security security cracks. And it keeps on going. And so the point of the joke, as you would expect, there's many layers and and fall callbacks and contingencies, etc.. And when I did the investigation, it was just a symphony of errors.

00:30:30:13 - 00:30:48:02
Alex De Fina
There should have been for gods in this area. But, you know, Bob was sick today, so we only had three. And then this guy who was there, he forgot his radio that day and then something else happened. And it's very similar to those air crash investigations. It's usually sort of one mistake leads to another mistake. That's another mistake, another oversight.

00:30:48:04 - 00:31:10:10
Alex De Fina
And if it was a gambling man, that's what I would assume has happened here, that there's probably just a resourcing issue. There should have been an agent here. Someone should check that one thing there and just look at all these mistakes, oversights, etc., build up to a situation where someone slipped through the cracks and was in a position that they shouldn't have been in.

00:31:10:12 - 00:31:13:04
Alex De Fina
And that's what we're saying now.

00:31:13:06 - 00:31:36:03
Itamar Marani
I agree with you. Can I go back to your story to say something here that I think a lot of people won't like to hear. But it is a simple fact about what you said that I don't know if this is the truth, the story that there was a female secret agent, that a Secret Service agent, and she got crack and said, I don't see the value in having a female in that position.

00:31:36:07 - 00:32:00:01
Itamar Marani
There's a ton of value in having females in espionage because they have a giant advantage there. They don't stand out as much. They're they have a giant advantage whether they're undercover agents, undercover air marshals, whatever it may be. But when it's an overt position, not a covert position, when everybody already knows what you're doing, there's no advantage just not being as physically strong as a six foot two male.

00:32:00:03 - 00:32:14:22
Itamar Marani
There's no advantage. And I think that's sometimes where a lot of their quality stuff gets taken too far. And again, I think as far as like, you know, women in espionage, they're amazing and even not an espionage, but let's say they work as part of the security team, but they're in the undercover detail. It's mixed around the crowds.

00:32:14:22 - 00:32:32:23
Itamar Marani
See what's going on. Phenomenal agents. And some of these women are amazing agents. But the physicality, when you're already in that overt position, it just doesn't make sense. You're giving up something without getting something. When they're working undercover positions, you're getting a lot and there's a lot better. Like the tradeoff is better to have a woman there instead of the men.

00:32:33:01 - 00:32:40:11
Itamar Marani
But in these situations, that's just a result. This either shouldn't have happened. There's no need for that. There was no benefit.

00:32:40:13 - 00:33:12:12
Alex De Fina
Of plus surprise to see two female section officers converge around Trump. And then, you know, you got two guys. If you would expect that if you're that level of of to a high value principle that the Secret Service agents would be much closer resembling like NFL linebackers, you got £300 men wearing, you know, level three full plates because those agents sitting in front.

00:33:12:13 - 00:33:32:08
Alex De Fina
TRUMP For the most part, if there was follow up shots, there's been or maybe a larger caliber round that would just gone straight through those agents, potentially straight through the plate. It's a real miracle that he's still alive, given all these.

00:33:32:08 - 00:33:52:14
Itamar Marani
Files are curious. Thing is like, I wonder why that guy stopped shooting. I wonder how quickly they got him or whatever it may be. But again, just to that point, I think women have a have a great place as far as the post-production world and espionage place. But it's only when they're undercover. If you're going for code for an overt position, we already know the person is security.

00:33:52:14 - 00:34:12:05
Itamar Marani
There's no advantage in having someone who's not physically as strong as a six foot two dude linebacker, whatever it may be. There's just no advantage to it. None. So that was something I just want to talk about. It's like I know some people don't like to hear that, but it's just a simple truth. Again, phenomenal advantages when there is an upside, when they're undercover, not when they're not.

00:34:12:07 - 00:34:17:03
Itamar Marani
So I want to talk about that. I do want to move on to Trump's actual mindset here.

00:34:17:05 - 00:34:18:11
Alex De Fina
Perfect.

00:34:18:13 - 00:34:43:12
Itamar Marani
Cool. So for me, that was a very interesting thing to see him again. I don't know his politics, his agendas, just looking at the individual, he had just gotten shot and his first reaction was to show, I'm still a savage, I'm all good. Which was first off, it's like, that's a very strong individual. Right off the bat, he didn't immediately get scattered.

00:34:43:12 - 00:35:06:16
Itamar Marani
And you can say, you know what, he's a psychopath. See this? But there's a benefit to being a psychopath at some levels, as the saying goes, like all CEOs have psychopathic tendencies. You have to be able have that. You can't just break emotion. And the fact that he did that again, aside from the fact that he shouldn't have been able to from the Secret Service, it shows that is a very strong mindset with that.

00:35:06:18 - 00:35:32:17
Itamar Marani
It was also reckless to him recognizing there is a shooter here and I'm still wanting to show himself and all that phenomenal media shows very strong, probably not the most wise thing to do. Would you agree? And the challenging part about that is that valor without wisdom is recklessness, because it just takes you like go suicide mode in the military, whatever it may be.

00:35:32:19 - 00:35:50:08
Itamar Marani
And I'm not saying that's what Trump is, but it's something to be aware of that he has a very strong mindset. But in that situation, when push comes to shove, it was more so his ego taking over than his mind. I mean, just wanted to show I'm okay. He wasn't like, you know, strategically, what's the right thing to do?

00:35:50:08 - 00:36:06:18
Itamar Marani
And you're not maybe was actually creating all that media hype for him, whatever it may be. Maybe he was somehow able to assess this is not that big of a danger anymore. The shots have stopped, whatever it may be. Let me make a shot. Maybe he was able to do that in real time. But if he wasn't, then there was something that compel them to make a show out of it.

00:36:06:22 - 00:36:18:07
Itamar Marani
Before he knew that he was actually safe. And I think that's something interesting to be conscious of is like how he thought about that. Do you have any thoughts on that?

00:36:18:09 - 00:36:41:17
Alex De Fina
Yeah, my my, my takeaways from his mindset were one, I think that's hard. What I think he had a whole lot of time to sit there and strategically think about how he presents himself over the next five or 6 seconds. So that sort of fight or flight freeze I think is pretty obvious which which Camp Trump sort of falls into.

00:36:41:18 - 00:37:06:00
Alex De Fina
And I think that's that's a real positive for for his profile, etc.. Secondly, that was a very high stakes event. If if Trump had turned towards that, for example, if the shots weren't sort of Trump standing up with sort of blood coming out of his ear with American flags, sort of picture perfect, but picture perfect.

00:37:06:02 - 00:37:09:00
Itamar Marani
If I guessing like a bald eagle flying behind him with that. Yeah, yeah.

00:37:09:00 - 00:37:10:02
Alex De Fina
Yeah, yeah.

00:37:10:04 - 00:37:11:17
Itamar Marani
Yeah.

00:37:11:18 - 00:37:48:06
Alex De Fina
I there could, that could have had a different set of it could be similar to a hundred different ways where, you know, his wig blew off and he's like, you know, crying or, or he's pulling the secrets of the female Secret Service In front of him is a thousand different ways in which he's carefully curated. Profile would have been destroyed in a split second where you know, push comes to shove and now, you know, the the anti-Trump crowd groups have pointed to him and said, look, he's this guy talks a big game.

00:37:48:06 - 00:38:12:13
Alex De Fina
But when push comes to shove is all about protecting himself or he's a coward or he's whatever. So, you know, was my two main takeaways in terms of his mindset. The first one that that reactive sort of posturing that, you know, I'm not scared I'm going to fight this. I think that's are the hardwired or has just been in range over the course of his life.

00:38:12:15 - 00:38:30:08
Alex De Fina
And the second point that in all the different ways that could have played out, which would have actually completely eroded his his profile that he's created for himself, what he actually did do just it enhanced it. So I thought I was very interesting.

00:38:30:10 - 00:38:45:09
Itamar Marani
Yeah. So this and again, without any relation to his political views or leanings, to his reaction, the only political leader that I'm guilty he came to mind when I thought who would do that as well was probably Churchill.

00:38:45:11 - 00:38:45:23
Alex De Fina
Or Yeah.

00:38:46:01 - 00:39:11:21
Itamar Marani
Roosevelt, who actually I think did get shot once during a speech and kept giving the speech. And the interesting thing about these figures is that they're a phenomenally they're during times of extreme chaos and hardship, like World War Two, like depressions and so on. But it's also interesting that sometimes these leaders are not the right leaders for a more calm time than a wartime consiglieri in a peacetime consiglieri.

00:39:11:23 - 00:39:33:18
Itamar Marani
And it's not against, by my judgment, it's just not what the public views it as. There's a reason Churchill didn't keep getting voted in and so on. And I think it is something to be aware of that. But again, no such thing as a good or bad mindset which is ineffective or ineffective one for certain situations, context. And his mindset seems to be one that's extremely effective in dealing with chaos.

00:39:33:20 - 00:39:55:20
Itamar Marani
But it sounds like it's not the one that's to bring people together in a calm space. So that's kind of the point I wanted to make about that, that his mindset is obviously he's very strong. He's doesn't get rattled too easily that you love to get shot at. Your life's in danger. He doesn't get rattled. And the only question to remember is that sometimes valor can turn into recklessness.

00:39:55:22 - 00:40:15:12
Itamar Marani
And that's just the way I would think about it. Again, I'm not saying he is reckless, but it is something to be conscious of. And that was kind of the big thing I wanted to take away, because I think a lot of CEOs also likely want to be very strong. They want to be very brave. It's also important to know when is a time place for that so doesn't turn into recklessness because that can happen.

00:40:15:15 - 00:40:23:06
Itamar Marani
Valor without wisdom can turn out into recklessness. And it is something to be conscious of.

00:40:23:08 - 00:40:40:15
Alex De Fina
If you think it's potentially maybe not the situation. But what you can know situation is, is that that wartime leader that might be more courageous might also manifest the situations where they need to be courageous.

00:40:40:17 - 00:40:51:08
Itamar Marani
Absolutely. I think they they want to keep being able to play the game. It happens. It happens a lot. I want to get into too much politics, but it happens a lot.

00:40:51:10 - 00:41:17:15
Alex De Fina
Yeah, I think the Segway there for me in business is that I can look back at earlier stages, my entrepreneurial life and I would categorize myself in those times as more of a wartime entrepreneur. But maybe half of those battles were self manifested because I viewed myself in that light. So I actually created the metaphorical wars that I had to experience, maybe because of my perspective.

00:41:17:17 - 00:41:38:12
Itamar Marani
So yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, you play games, we try to find games that we can win and that's the big thing. And I think with a lot of the leaders, when I look back again, I'm not a giant history buff, but a lot of these leaders kept saying, We need more war, we need more war, we need more war because they're really good at war.

00:41:38:13 - 00:42:10:08
Itamar Marani
And the public either said they had enough, they were just fatigued from it or they thought they were wrong. And it's sometimes just a thing to remember. Like and if you're a very aggressive, hard biting individual, tons of benefits from, just make sure that is challenged with intentionality, because if you can do that, you can take that strength that Trump has, just phenomenal strength, that being able to not be brutal and just make sure use it intentionally doesn't take over how you view things can be a phenomenal asset.

00:42:10:10 - 00:42:58:13
Alex De Fina
Do you think that there's a way that you could summarize that type of an avatar and say the kind of personality that Trump is a leader that Trump is if up on the spectrum in terms of courage, etc.? I think that that is a very close cousin to narcissism. I don't think you get the bravado without having some sense of inflated ego narcissistic tendencies, because when when Trump was they move or the secret services trying to get him off the X and you want to put your shoes on, is that because he's actually worried about his sort of foot placement or he just prefers to walk the shoes on when he told the Secret Service

00:42:58:15 - 00:43:15:05
Alex De Fina
one second so I can raise my fist to the crowd, I don't think that was true. His enduring love for the people. I do believe that comes from a place of I've just been threatened. This is this is me sort of metaphorically, say, like my UFC fighter mouthing off to God and sort of holding my belts up or whatever that was, He's posturing.

00:43:15:07 - 00:43:36:10
Alex De Fina
You haven't got me yet. I don't think there's anything to do with the people, but I've seen media start to attribute those type of things to him and he loves the people so much. Everybody's being shot at is yeah, he's giving us a sign of solidarity. I don't think that's for anyone other than himself. And so maybe that mindset of extreme wartime leader is usually going to be the kind of person who's going to be an egomaniac narcissist.

00:43:36:15 - 00:43:38:18
Alex De Fina
At the same time.

00:43:38:19 - 00:44:04:13
Itamar Marani
This. So so I'll say the really wild thing here I don't think is anything wrong with again, not a full on but having let's call it narcissistic or psychopathic tendencies there's benefits to it if you know how to control it and how to like basically challenge the right way. Any Trump his mindset is phenomenal as far as his ability to to not care what people think, to endure, like the amount of endurance he has for someone.

00:44:04:13 - 00:44:22:17
Itamar Marani
He's not a young individual, but the amount of endurance he has for that and how much quote unquote, hate he's receiving and he's still going forward. A lot of people aren't willing to do public speaking because what if they mumble, you know, he doesn't care at all and there's benefits to it. There's no way. Again, it's an emergency consisting of benefits.

00:44:22:23 - 00:44:46:05
Itamar Marani
It's effective in helping you accomplish big goals because he can shut out a of things because he doesn't care about this or that or he cares about it less, whatever it may be. And I think a lot of times that whole like, oh, narcissistic behavior or whatever it may be, it's it's all touted as that. But there are benefits to having tendencies that allow you to do that at times, even if it's not all the time at time benefits to it.

00:44:46:07 - 00:45:01:05
Itamar Marani
It's effective I think there's a lot of challenges. And if you could if that's his way of managing all that, like the results speak for themselves, what he's able to accomplish, I'm like him or not. I dunno. His politics and saying, what are you able to accomplish? It's hard to argue against.

00:45:01:06 - 00:45:37:10
Alex De Fina
I think those with with the entrepreneurs that you coach, do you see a disconnect if you were to summarize what is going on as you work with between a desire to have that kind of a mindset? So Trump's state that it could be a Goggins, a jocko, someone people say, I wish I had that mindset yet. Are you prepared to actually endure what it takes to either fortify that mindset or create that mindset?

00:45:37:12 - 00:45:57:04
Alex De Fina
Because, you know, I do agree that Trump has probably got no shortage of enemies, had plenty of sleepless nights. Yeah. So I think that I, I aspire to have a mindset like that. Yeah. I don't know whether I'm willing to necessarily subject myself to what it takes to actually build that mindset.

00:45:57:06 - 00:46:15:00
Itamar Marani
Yes, I think a big part of it is the cost, so to speak. That's the way I like to phrase it. So people hold on to certain beliefs then and they have certain goals, let's call it. They know that I have this belief that I shouldn't care about what people think about me, and I need to do more public speaking very basically.

00:46:15:02 - 00:46:33:00
Itamar Marani
And they know that I feel like I have this belief and it's not true. I know it's nonsense. Nobody really cares, blah, blah, blah. I should just. However, what's the benefit of me holding on to? I'm getting a certain sense of safety or security that no one can make fun of me. There's no way I get anything wrong, whatever it may be.

00:46:33:02 - 00:46:57:18
Itamar Marani
And a lot of times the cost of greatness is letting go of that security or safety, psychological kind of comfort. And I think he's a. GOGGINS Jocko. TRUMP They're happy to pay that cost to them. It's it's like it's just a cost admission to the performance. They're happy to pay it. When people say, I just want the upside and I want to accept the price, that's what it's usually just sad, delusional stuff.

00:46:58:00 - 00:47:15:20
Itamar Marani
The world should be different, it should be easier, I shouldn't have. And the realest the guys that I've seen that are the best performers are the ones that are willing to accept the price. Just recognize that's part of reality. It's the price of admission.

00:47:15:22 - 00:47:42:12
Alex De Fina
I think that's a fantastic element of your coaching that I've experienced in the arena, and Elite is preparing people mentally for that and saying, Look, if you want to achieve X, I prepared for the costs of X, but it's athletics, politics, business. It's very rare that those elite performers get there without appropriate amounts of scars and traumatic events to get there.

00:47:42:12 - 00:47:59:21
Alex De Fina
And that's something which I think a lot of people haven't fully calibrated, is that aspirations or ambition relevant to the cost that they're willing to pay to achieve it. And obviously someone like Trump has, Trump has.

00:47:59:21 - 00:48:23:19
Itamar Marani
And it kind of threw up around, I think his I don't think I would I would wonder if his Secret Service agents had actually ran through a proper mental model of what likely to happen. So a basic level of mental models would be like, the president gets shot first we cover him, then we evacuate him. And we also, you know, skin threats, whatever it may be.

00:48:23:19 - 00:48:44:15
Itamar Marani
It's in a very dry tactical level. But a real mental model is theirs. And the president gets shot. Well, my heartbeat is going to jump to 200 and all of a sudden I'm going to cover him all a sudden in my hand, I can feel like it's a little bit like twitchy. I'm searching for my hip immediately and then everybody gets up.

00:48:44:15 - 00:49:00:16
Itamar Marani
I know Jeff, Dave and John, they're going be a bit panicky. Perhaps they're younger agents, whatever it may be. I'm going to have to take a look for a quick second. I'm going to also feel a bit of stress, adrenaline, whatever. Maybe I'm going to take his head. He's going to resist because he loves doing his stuff, whatever it may be.

00:49:00:21 - 00:49:24:17
Itamar Marani
I'm going to very aggressively take his head and lead the way here. I'm going to feel very uncomfortable about doing that to a former president, but I'm still going to do it. And that kind of mental model where you prepare for the emotionality of the event, it's a whole different ballgame because what could have happened is that the agents knew what they should do on a technical level, but they didn't prepare themselves for the emotions they might face when those emotions came across.

00:49:24:17 - 00:49:44:01
Itamar Marani
All of a sudden, they were caught off guard, and because they were caught off guard, they were just kind of stalled for a second, like you saw. And that's where I think the big comparison is entrepreneurship. A lot of people prepare like, how am I going to do the pitch? How am I going to talk to the individual, whatever it may be, how am I going to talk to the employee when they just think about what are the tactical things that need to happen?

00:49:44:03 - 00:50:00:03
Itamar Marani
They miss out on a big part because they think, Oh, I knew what I should have done. It's like, No, then you didn't fully prepare. You didn't prepare for when I say this thing, this is how they're going to feel. That's how me seeing them feel that way is going to make me feel and want to do. And that's the thing I actually need to avoid.

00:50:00:05 - 00:50:12:11
Itamar Marani
And when you prepare to that level, that's when you can really perform at your best. And I would wonder if that's something that Trump's people actually did. Secret Service agents.

00:50:12:12 - 00:50:40:13
Alex De Fina
So if I understand this correctly, because I hadn't thought of it from this perspective, is the close protection detail for Trump should have let's assume that they do trained and coordinated in a way that their principal is likely to react differently, to say about so. The Secret Service detail for Biden should things go wrong. What we're going to do is pretty much going to know what's going on.

00:50:40:15 - 00:51:04:21
Alex De Fina
We have to grab the old guy. He's probably stiff, let him over, drag him out, whereas for Trump, he's potentially less likely to be compliant with the Secret Service agents because of the character that he use and therefore the actions that they would have to establish in their recipes might have to differ because it's a different principal, essentially the same job, different personnel.

00:51:04:23 - 00:51:39:02
Alex De Fina
And so I wonder if there's a there's a lesson there for in the business world that the things you need to do this competition or your own internal team that might be able to be intellectually thought out as a process. But if your competition is Trump versus Biden, you might need to recalibrate your tactics based on, let's call it the enemy, how they're going to go, how to best we can assume they're going to react.

00:51:39:04 - 00:52:01:01
Alex De Fina
Because if you just take a boilerplate, you know, do this, then that works. So for one competitor in the past might not work with this competitor right now because as compared to might be more like a Trump and they're going to act more irrationally, more brazenly. And therefore we need to recalibrate it to to the current situation.

00:52:01:03 - 00:52:22:04
Itamar Marani
I was in a bit of a different way because I think that's all true. What, you have more control over them. What's easier to do, though, is how are you going to actually handle your team? There's one person that needs to be spoken to this way, so one person needs to be spoken a bit more this way. And understanding that leadership isn't, you know, a cookie cutter kind of thing.

00:52:22:08 - 00:52:39:15
Itamar Marani
If understand the individual, then today it's about getting an individual to take a certain action. And the route to them is very different. It's different people, and that's the way I think it's more applicable for a lot of people because again, thinking about how to manipulate the competitor and all that, all this doing is unnecessary. You're not playing a zero sum game in a zero sum environment.

00:52:39:20 - 00:52:58:05
Itamar Marani
Giant company. It's less about that. This is about your company doing its best within its own circumstances, and for that it's more beneficial to know how can I control the board? That's a bad thing, but how can I control how my employees behave by understanding more so like how I can get through each one of them in a different way?

00:52:58:06 - 00:53:14:09
Itamar Marani
And understanding each one is going to have an emotional reaction. I might have an emotional reaction to that as well. How do I mitigate that? How do I anticipate that? So I don't do the wrong thing and so on. It's often more layers you go to with it, the better you're prepared with that you want to send what you want to be prepared for.

00:53:14:11 - 00:53:30:05
Itamar Marani
And this is going a bit long. The podcast. I want to wrap it up with a bit of a tactic here. Let's talk about risk management for a second because this is a we talked a lot about preparation today, what's good, what's bad. So there's a very simple way to understand risk that I kind of understand at the agency.

00:53:30:05 - 00:53:50:20
Itamar Marani
I'm not sure if that's exactly the way we taught or the way I put it together, but basically risk is a component of danger you're facing and the level of control that you can assert. So the level of danger comes down to three things the immediacy of the threat, the probability of it, and the magnitude of possible harm.

00:53:50:22 - 00:54:16:17
Itamar Marani
So the probability of an assassination attempt, like you said, it has been around since the eighties, so not super. The immediacy could be very immediate. If you have intelligence, the magnitude possible high. The possible harm, though, is astronomical. So it is a high level of danger. And that's why you said, like you have people that their whole lives are there, they get paid, they get trained and they don't actually end up doing them because there's a high level of danger that has to be accounted for.

00:54:16:19 - 00:54:42:03
Itamar Marani
Too many say, how can you control this danger? Because basically, if the level of control you can exert is greater than the danger, it's low risk. If the level of control we can assert is lesser than danger, it's a very high risk situation. And the and the methods of control are first, if you can distance yourself entirely from the threat which they didn't do here, they didn't create a perimeter where somebody couldn't have shot them with a semiautomatic.

00:54:42:05 - 00:55:01:09
Itamar Marani
That distance component of risk mitigation of control wasn't in place. So then you say barriers, okay, I can't distance myself from the threat. Mechanics create a barrier between us. This is where they use to put people in a bulletproof cases or whatever it may be. And it's why the president has a bulletproof car and all that. Just there was no barrier there either.

00:55:01:11 - 00:55:25:18
Itamar Marani
And they got I get how that could be very challenging to do with TV, with people, with media. It doesn't look good if someone's in a bulletproof box, but that was one that also wasn't done. Okay. Then after you have the you have the sorry, the distance and then the barriers, then finally you get down to two rungs, which are a bit different because you already engaging with the threat.

00:55:25:20 - 00:55:47:06
Itamar Marani
Remember, if he said the best thing to do is to put that all together. So what you have there is basically the countermeasures. So this is when you say, okay, someone shoots, we shoot back, and before that you have deterrence. So hopefully individuals are deterred from doing this because they see a lot of secret agents, a lot of Secret Service agents are with a lot of guns.

00:55:47:06 - 00:56:10:04
Itamar Marani
They understand the consequences. And that's got to deter them. If that doesn't work, they actually counter actually attack them. And it was interesting because they have to get down to the fourth rung and that's why this was such a close call. They failed to create that distance. There was no barrier in place. The counter sorry, the deterrence didn't matter because that individual didn't care.

00:56:10:06 - 00:56:35:04
Itamar Marani
So finally do as a countermeasure after he had already shot, then they had to respond. And that was a problem there. I think it's a framework that we get a lot of time to use for business because again, like you said, there's a lot of resources of this stuff. So you have to understand that if there's a danger that's actually worth putting these methods against and that's when you figure out what's the magnitude of possible harm if something goes wrong, what's the probability of a go wrong?

00:56:35:06 - 00:56:44:17
Itamar Marani
And even if it's high probability, high magnitude, but the immediacy is a thousand years away, it's a non-issue for you.

00:56:44:19 - 00:57:11:12
Alex De Fina
I think that's great. It's a great takeaway for the business leaders out that is that what we're what we're going to be they call it the the watercooler quarterback of the Monday morning quarterback. We will be sort of doing a hypothetical about what this guy or gal should have done in that situation. But these are all microsecond decisions that are very complex.

00:57:11:14 - 00:57:39:21
Alex De Fina
And as you said, this is the fourth rung. And if if the top three had been more absolute, more, more concrete, then maybe we wouldn't be discussing this at all. And my main takeaway has been for business is how do I operate despite the training falling to pieces? How do I, in spite of my team, fall into place?

00:57:39:21 - 00:58:03:12
Alex De Fina
It's going to show in a million simulations trying to exercise of that what we do pitfalls head goes down for off. It didn't happen and redundancies would be like what happens if the principal is standing up and put their shoes on. So we just grab his head and again. So I think there will be all these domino effects that didn't play out because the principal didn't do what we thought people would do.

00:58:03:14 - 00:58:22:05
Alex De Fina
Then the other agents didn't do what we would think that we're going to do, and that happens all the time in business. This report didn't do what they should have done while trying to do with a resource to do it. Despite the training and resourcing falling apart. They didn't react in the way that I would assume they would have react.

00:58:22:06 - 00:58:48:13
Alex De Fina
And it gets very, very difficult in those moments. And so maybe the highest level take away is how do we operate as business leaders in a world where we can't we can put all those contingencies in place, we can do the place kind of operation, but when the metaphorical shit hits the fan, you need to be capable of making decisions in the split seconds, despite the people and the processes all falling apart.

00:58:48:15 - 00:59:07:19
Itamar Marani
So say my my final thoughts on this, I, I think it's less about I assumed this would go well, but it's more about recognizing what should I prepare for, what's worthwhile and that kind of framework, understanding what's worthwhile. Because again, if you you know, you have obviously if the employee doesn't fully get it, you guys can talk about this.

00:59:07:19 - 00:59:34:03
Itamar Marani
No big deal. If this is a really high stakes conversation, like a merger about your perhaps hire or fire key employee, whatever it may be, that's worth actually doing. The preparation and building these months models are actually going to like the third or fourth layer of the mental model. Otherwise, it's just not worth it. But when it is worth it and there's a high danger here that something could go wrong, that's when you want to figure out what could go wrong you want to prepare for.

00:59:34:05 - 00:59:53:06
Itamar Marani
And I think those agents there is probably some kind of get in. And I don't want to discredit I'm sure they're phenomenal agents and all that, but for whatever reason would be this because of fatigue, you know, the trail, the campaign trail or whatever it may be, the depth of their mental models didn't seem to show out, like in actual results.

00:59:53:08 - 01:00:10:07
Itamar Marani
And there's something out of issue there. So if you're prepared for something very important, make sure you prepare properly and not just think what can I do in the best case scenario? But if this happens, what do we do? If that happens, what do we do? This happens. What happens? What do we do? And that's kind of the note I want to leave it on.

01:00:10:09 - 01:00:31:03
Itamar Marani
So again, I don't think it was a conspiracy. I think conspiracy is hard to pull off. I was also in the Shin Bet and we actually talk as part of our training program about the assassination, not an attempt, but a successful assassination. The prime minister, Israel, Corbyn, and how there's also conspiracy theories about that. And they broke it down like whiteness is not possible.

01:00:31:05 - 01:00:54:16
Itamar Marani
It's very challenging to coordinate it. And they also did actually acknowledge when things were done wrong and who did it wrong and what happened. I think the Secret Service there wasn't as mentally prepared as it could have been. Again, it's easy to say, but it's the reality that the common judgment, I think Trump's mindset is that of someone who is a very, very strong individual.

01:00:54:18 - 01:01:29:18
Itamar Marani
Just the only caveat is valor without wisdom can be reckless and has to be conscious of that. And finally, for your own selves, prepare for the high stakes situations. If there's a really high magnitude of possible harm and the probability is high and it could be an immediate threat, I think that's worth while, not assuming things will go this way or that way, but actually preparing for certain depth and understanding, not just what are the things I'm going to do, but what are the emotions that I might feel that might cause me to not do the things that I know logically assure that you can prepare for, that you won't fall into the trap.

01:01:29:19 - 01:01:33:22
Itamar Marani
So aside from that, what I say, Alex, thank you for coming on today.

01:01:34:00 - 01:01:35:01
Alex De Fina
And there was.

01:01:35:01 - 01:01:50:03
Itamar Marani
This episode about and next week we'll get back to our normal case studies. We're going to be breaking down one of the entrepreneurs. We helped actually pretty much quadruple his business and closed six figure deals and we'll get to that. So from that, everybody stay safe. We will.