CNN Host Asks GOP Lawmaker About 92-Year-Old Chuck Grassley Becoming President if WHCD Turned Tragic
- Rep. Michael McCaul expressed concern over the lack of a sufficient plan for presidential line of succession in the event of a tragedy at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
CNN’s Pamela Brownasked Rep. Michael McCaul(R-TX) on Monday about the presidential “line of succession” if anything happened to the actual president , vice president, and speaker of the House.
All three were present at Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner when a gunman opened fire in the Washington Hilton ballroom.
“Senator [Chuck] Grassleyis the president pro tempore of the Senate, so, he would have been the fourth in line,” Brown said. “He would have been the one — the quote, unquote, ‘designated survivor.’ He is 92 years old. Do you think that that was a sufficient plan?”
“No, I don’t!” McFaul answered.
“You know, I again, when I looked up at the head table, even before the shooting — to see the vice president up there as well. I’ve got a security background, so that concerned me . And then, of course, the three gunshots go off at that point in time. And Wolf was three feet away from the shooter. I cannot believe you were that close to him and survived it, and I’m glad you’re in the land of the living,” McCaul said to host Wolf Blitzer.
“But, you don’t know if it’s going to escalate at that point. Is it going to be an AR-15 spray or you can have an explosive device? All those things should have been taken into account,” McCaul said.
McCaul added that members of Congress were escorted out of the room, “but the rest of them had to stay in the ballroom, which was also dangerous because you have all these people who are captivated in that room. And if a bomb had gone off, they were completely sitting ducks, you know, at that point in time.”
“I felt that way. I was hiding under the table at one point, and I just wanted to get home to my three kids. And it was quite scary,” Brown said.
“I happened to be on the second floor, just above the ballroom at that moment, when I see a guy on the floor with a shotgun firing weapons, and I hear these loud bangs. It was obviously very, very frightening,” Blitzer said. “Thank God I’m okay. And thank God nobody else was —”
“Thank God you are. Thank God you’re okay,” McCaul echoed.
Watch the clip above via CNN.
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