Ep. #532: Michael Render, Frank Figliuzzi

Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Start the clock.

Hey!

thank you, please.

Faithful, faithful, stop.

We got to get this in before curfew.

That's right.

Big week for us here in L.A.

We were upgraded from quarantine to curfew.

Hey!

Curfew?

How does that even work when you're already on lockdown?

Remain even further in your homes.

Jesus.

I mean, last week, we finally reopened stores.

This week, we burnt them down.

You know that big earthquake that we've been waiting for here forever in LA?

I'm expecting that will hit next week.

And then the alien invasion.

And by the way, if the aliens do come, please take me with you.

Probe my ass all you want.

Just get me the fuck out of here.

Yeah, it's been quite a week.

Now, the media always says that 95% of the protesters have been peaceful, which is true, true, and of course, I think, as all right-thinking people would agree, for a completely just and righteous cause.

But then they show only the violence on TV because some individuals will always use protests as an excuse to foment chaos and hate.

But enough about the Republicans.

There's also some looters out there.

And I tell you, no businesses are really safe now.

I've seen Targets hit and AutoZones, the Apple store, Sears was not looted.

Even the looters were like,

there's nothing in there.

That's very sad.

But yeah, I mean, it pisses me off because we're hearing reports that a lot of the people who are doing the looting are not from here.

Police say they're bad actors from out of town.

And I'm going to tell you, the last thing Hollywood needs is more bad actors.

It's one thing to come here to break into show business.

You can't break into everything else.

But no, I noticed the looters are very multiracial.

A lot of, they say, white kids from the suburbs.

I saw a kid on the news the other day walked into an Adidas store and said, I looted the wrong size.

Could I get this in a 10?

I saw up on Hollywood Boulevard, there were two Batmans fighting over a fur coat.

What the fuck?

But no, it does seem like there's

more of an effort to go after white people's stores.

Forever 21 is now no longer 21.

It's at the mall right next to Bed Bath and Beyond Recognition.

But

I don't know.

By the time you watch this, who knows what the heck is going to happen.

I mean, the news is happening so fast, Trump had to scramble from moment to moment to make it worse.

Did you see what he Trump?

I mean, all week, the first thing he did, beginning of the week, had a call, group call with governors from around the country to tell them they're weak.

They need to dominate.

At least they think that's what he said.

It was so hard to hear because the signal from his underground bunker was not good.

Yeah, he,

as soon as some shit started outside the the White House, he went right to the bunker, five floors below ground, right.

He says he wasn't hiding.

He said, I love this.

He said it was more of an inspection.

Ah, yes, an inspection.

And he didn't piss himself.

He was watering his shoes.

I tell you, deranged authoritarians and bunkers, always a winning combination.

Trump is now pitching himself for a new sitcom at NBC called, That's So Hitler.

Well, the shit he does.

I mean, like peaceful protests were going on outside the White House, Americans doing what they are allowed to do.

He dispersed them this week with tear gas and then walks across the street so he could hold up a Bible.

Did you see that holding the Bible?

It looked like he never held a book before, which is entirely possible.

So they say he's losing support.

I don't know.

I would like to appeal directly to the Trump fans and just remind them, 100,000 dead, the economy is collapsing, the soldiers in the street, cities are on fire.

Jired is guarding the White House with a shotgun.

Is America great enough for you yet?

I mean, is there any wonder?

Couldn't we have predicted this?

The FDA says there is a shortage of the antidepressant Zoloft.

Yeah, well, you know, combine combine that with the shortage of toilet paper.

This is bad news if you're a sad sack of shit.

All right, we got a great show.

We have Michael Steele, Rosa Brooks, Frank Faglussi, and Killer Mike.

I spoke to them all yesterday.

Let's get to it right now.

Okay, my first guest is the activist who raps as Killer Mike of Run the Jewels.

How you doing?

Whose latest album, Run the Jewels 4, was released for free digitally on Wednesday.

Mike Render from Atlanta.

Killer, Mike, how are you, sir?

I'm good, my friend.

How you been?

I'm so appreciative of you doing this.

I know you had a busy week.

You made an amazing speech there in your hometown

that everybody saw.

And I want to just quote the one thing that you said over and over in the speech, and I'm glad you emphasized it.

Plot, plan, strategize, organize, mobilize.

What all those things have in common is it means we're thinking about the future.

We're thinking about tomorrow.

And I think when I look at the politics of America, you know, there's a great place for a protest and being in the streets, but Republicans are better at voting.

And I think that was a big part of your message, that that's what's really going to change stuff, organizing, voting.

Yeah, what we do know about this Republic is the

We know that the bullet box and the ballot box, you know, have both changed this country in a lot of ways.

And I think that the ballot box is the most easily accessible way on a local level, especially to start to change the fabric of this country.

I think that the kids that were outraging in the streets certainly deserve to be outraging in the streets.

I appreciate the protest.

I appreciate destroying property when it's followed the next day by real organizing.

I want kids to know that the righteous anger is certainly permitted and I would say encouraged to wake society up to say, hey, this is going on.

We had to do it in 92.

And after we did it, we saw a flood of jobs programs coming to the community.

We saw gang truths happen.

And for a while, we saw relative peace in some of the neighborhoods that had been destructive.

And I think that coming out of this riot season, I think we're going to be looking at more organizers.

And in terms of voting, the New Georgia Project is going on right now.

They're registering people to vote.

as far south as Vibellia, Georgia in the onion farms to right here in some of the toughest neighborhoods in Atlanta.

So I want to encourage people on the local, regional, or state level to make sure they're supporting things like the New Georgia project.

So you're saying you are supportive of some destruction of property?

I know you're the son of a policeman yourself.

Yes, yes.

And that doesn't mean I want you to go out and burn down everything tomorrow.

What that means is property destroyed is insured.

One of my businesses has a bullet hole through the window.

I have insurance.

That window can be replaced.

The young man who died under the knee of a police officer, Mr.

Floyd, his life can never be replaced.

So I'm talking as a property owner, as a business owner, as a person who owns apartments.

My property has been destroyed before.

I've had to clean it up.

I've had to do it with my own hands and hire people.

So I understand that from a property owner's perspective.

But from a young person's perspective, that's so full of rage, that's been so suppressed, that is being currently oppressed in terms of the duality of policing in this country.

I can understand the destruction of property.

But after the destruction of property, I need you to become an organizer.

I need you to plot, plan, strategize, organize, and mobilize so that we can organize under legislation, under those gold don'ts and effect legislation to make sure that the equal rights of everyone is given in this country, full constitutional rights were enjoyed by all.

So, how long do you think the protests, I mean, they seem to be dying down here in L.A.

We, I think, are not for the first time today.

This is Thursday, we're a day earlier, we tape now.

Yeah.

Then you'll see it on Friday having a curfew.

But

people don't have much to do now.

There was a lockdown.

They've been cooped up.

They don't you know a quarter of the country that was working in February is not working now.

So you have no job.

You know, there's no economy to come back to.

Why not be in the streets for a lot of people?

How long do you think the protests could go on, should go on?

Should it be an indefinite movement?

Well,

Huey Newton said that that's the will of the people.

The people ultimately decide the atmosphere and where the revolution goes.

My challenge or my in camaraderie with the people, as we protest, let's make sure we plot, plan, strategize, organize, and mobilize.

Protesting is the first step.

It's when you come in the ICU and you're bleeding.

They have to stop the bleeding first.

And then how do we stabilize the patient?

The stability comes through beating up your local ballot boxes.

It's in making sure that you vote in your prosecutors' races, voting in terms of who your mayors and senators are going to be.

You have to start to do that.

And voting isn't the only answer.

In my community, there must be a return to supporting small and mid-level black businesses.

Because if I don't have an economy of people that look like me, who's going to support my community outside of government?

If we're ever going to be free of total government control, then we can't be beholden on government for everything as well.

So I believe there's legal goals we should have.

There's legislative goals we should have, there's educational goals we should have.

So I don't believe protest ever ends as much as it evolves into a way of life that demands justice.

Stannie Du Hamer is famous for saying, until we all are free, nobody's free.

I thought you would be interested to note that a lot more people in Los Angeles now, which is, of course, a very liberal town, are interested in buying guns.

Because, you know,

you and I are both liberals who've taken a lot of shit from liberals because

we, I mean, you know, I don't know how you feel about guns.

I don't feel them at all because I don't really like guns, but I've said many times I'm a gun owner for just this reason, because people want self-reliance to a degree, and police can't always be there.

Obviously, someone in a bad neighborhood knows that better than someone who lives in a gated community.

And this is, I think, something you've spoken very eloquently about before, that, you know, you are a Second amendment supporter

absolutely i am i am pro using whatever tool it takes to preserve your life um you have a right to use a tool if it's a hatchet if it's a knife it's if it's a gun you have an ordained right because you're a human you're intelligent you know how to make tools so i want people to own guns i also want people to grow gardens so it's not just like i'm simply saying everybody go out grab a gun and go to the wild wild west i'm saying in matters of protecting yourself in these days and times um my wife and i just came from lunch with my publicist who was not a gun owner She now is a gun owner.

She now shoots and trains record.

My wife and I had a Glock 40 and a Glock 9 millimeter

in the middle of the compartment of our truck.

We felt safe.

We went and had food and got back home safely.

Should anyone have interrupted or tried to interrupt the life of me and my wife, then I gladly would have sent them home to whoever their god is.

But I don't leave every day with the thought that I have to use my gun, but I don't want to be caught with that one.

So the same way I keep a battery charger in my pocket for my Apple phone, at any given time you see me moving around the state of Georgia, I'm going to be armed.

And I hope that more Americans not only embrace arming themselves, but train.

Get outside, go shoot, go form a shooting club.

You know, get out and meet your neighbors and shake hands.

So it's more than just I own a gun.

And I'm going to tell you, for black people, I know the NRA has not had the best track record with us, but there's an organization called NATA, the National Association of

the National Association of African American, the National, well, NATA, N-A-A-G-A.

I'm blacking on the name, but it sounds like the other yeah we'll look it up national african american gun owners association so i want you to join i want you to join that and i want you to get out in groups and i want you to shoot i want you to hunt i want you to fish i want you to grow gardens but be as self-sustaining as possible because as we can see times can go terrible really quickly and you need to be able to take care of yourself yeah i always laugh when i see one of those movies and i've seen it in a million movies where the you know regular suburban guy he's not a gun owner and he's in bed at night with the wife and they hear an intruder downstairs.

He goes, honey, stay in bed.

And then what does he do?

He grabs either a baseball belt or a golf club.

And I'm like, okay, so you're not afraid to use violence and beat somebody's head and it kills the intruder.

You just want to use a really shitty tool to do it, a golf club.

Okay.

My wife, my wife and I, on either side of our bed, there's an AR-15.

a shotgun and one version of a Glock.

And that's because, you know, we want to be prepared for whatever may come.

And people think that terrible times won't come, but whether it's carjackings at gas stations or home invasions, because they find out who you are, let's not forget that ultimately, the beauty of this country in the Second Amendment is it gives you the right to fight against a tyrannical government if all those measures fail.

So the reason I want you protesting and organizing in the streets, the reason I want you voting, the reason I want you taking part in the census is if it ever gets to the point where you're just all at war with your government, you can say, I tried everything else.

So take gun ownership seriously take shooting and training seriously in california i'm glad you guys are catching up with georgia in terms of gun ownership i hope georgia catches up with you in terms of marijuana legalization so

well i i hope you and your wife are on good terms with all those guns by the bed that's

but i don't talk back much so we're okay

you don't want to have a fight about that uh well you meant it's interesting marijuana i know you and i we both love our pot and uh i i don't know if you saw but attorney General Barr has put DEA.

Thank you, Mike.

The ultimate respect for our interviews.

We're both stoned for it.

But

Barr has sick the DEA on the protest.

The DEA, this never happened.

We have people there on the streets.

And I just want to say to some of these protesters, if somebody offers you a joint, that might be a narc.

Yeah, straight up.

Let me tell you, the most ironic thing about that is when Nixon declared the drug war, he declared it on hippies and

on blacks, of course.

What they're essentially doing is a new version of that because hippies were just progressive white people at the time.

Shout out to Ben and Jerry.

You know, they were people that were progressive enough to say right is right and wrong is wrong.

And white's not always right.

We're going to side with what's right.

And of course, black people were pushing the line on having their rights.

So Nixon villainizing them is a tactic that we see is still being used today.

Why do you need drug enforcement agency in a protest?

You know, really, you should hope everyone gets stoned, gets hungry, and leaves.

It doesn't make very much sense to me, but it just shows that the government is willing to use whatever measures they can to suppress the people and their voices this time.

All right, Mike, I got to leave it there.

I thank you for doing this.

I just want to put this into your head.

You know, many a politician has started because they weren't a politician, but they started making speeches that people found mesmerizing, which you are doing now.

So, I don't know, vice president, killer Mike.

I don't know if something like that's in the future, but I'm putting the B in your bonnet.

All right, thank you, my friend.

Stay safe.

I'll talk to you soon.

Thank you, Mike.

Okay, time for our panel.

He is the former chair of the Republican National Committee and analyst for MSNBC and host of the Michael Steele podcast, my friend Michael Steele.

Welcome, Mike.

And she's a law professor at Georgetown School of Law, an author of How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything, Tales from the Pentagon.

Rosa Brooks from Alexandria, Virginia.

Thank you for joining me, panelists.

Absolutely.

Thanks for having us, Bill.

Well, I wish it was really in my home, but it's not.

Someday, someday in Jerusalem.

So the fall of the Republic seems to be a bit ahead of schedule.

I thought that Trump would not be calling for the military to be in the streets until October, but apparently that's what's going on this week.

And there is pushback from the military brass.

His current defense chief, Esper,

is against him using the 1807 Insurrection Act, which I guess was his pretext.

Former Secretary of Defense Mattis spoke out against him.

Mike Mullen, who used to be the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other...

former joint chiefs.

The military, the top military people seem to be against calling out the Army as the last step there before we lose who we really are.

But I feel like he's just going to fire Esper and then find someone who will do the job.

Would you agree?

You bet.

I mean, Michael, jump in whenever you want to, but I actually, in some ways, I'm just a little surprised he's waited this long.

I wasn't sure he was going to wait till October.

Every, you know,

really for the last couple of years, he has seemed to be unraveling and the threats of authoritarianism have been becoming more and more open.

It is a pretty dire sign, though, that all it took was three days or so of unrest to push him to say we need to send in the U.S.

military active duty troops to dominate American cities.

Definitely makes you wonder what else he's got up his sleeve between now and November.

You know,

I don't know if I agree with that completely in terms of the firing of Esper.

From what I'm hearing inside

the Trump bunker, which was actually the nub of why he did what he did,

is that he can't, that the politics does not work at this stage, given COVID-19, the fall and collapse of the economy, as well as the civic unrest that's out on the streets, to then on the heels of what everyone panned as one of the worst political stunts in history,

even those, all those great pastors that he was talking about who loved it, no, they didn't love it.

That to make this kind of a move against the Secretary

now, maybe in October that's the surprise, but right now there is no appetite inside the administration for that.

The President's going to have to sort of swallow this one hard and deal with it, even though he doesn't like the fact that Esper has sort of rebuked his approach and has really given credence to Mattis and others who are now coming out of the defense side of this conversation saying that the president has gone too far.

But who cares?

He doesn't care who in the administration is against it.

It's only him.

Many times we've seen people in the administration fire back at him.

He doesn't care that he will always get somebody.

Let me quote Tom Cotton.

He's a senator.

He went to Harvard.

He's a real person.

He said, let's see how tough these Antifa terrorists, they're terrorists now, are when facing facing the 101st airborne.

He's running the 101st airborne out there as a talking boy.

Matt Gates, you know this guy, that congressman from Florida?

Always looks like he's saying, eat it, nerd.

He says, now that we can clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East?

You know, they're ISIS.

And all of that bill feeds the base, and it's great fodder for them to chew on.

But here's the rub.

Trump is now seeing numbers inside of

their private polling, their internal polling that's showing, remember that 97, 98% of Republican base that was with Trump?

You know what the number is this week?

84.

He is losing ground among those very same people that Cotton and others are out there trying to stoke up.

That's why the hesitation.

That's why folks are inside closer to the president saying, we get what you want to do, but you have to understand how this is now being received, not just by the people you want to go after on the left and try to move maybe in the in the middle, but within your own

bunker, if you will, there's some questions about whether or not this is smart, this is the way to go.

Now, again, to your point, though, I'm not arguing against your point, because I think

in the end, yeah, he could wind up doing this, but the reality of it is in the heat of the moment we're in right now,

within the beginning of the summer before the convention, I just don't hear it.

I just don't see it.

I don't think it makes sense politically for him to do it.

But again, like you said, he's Trump.

So, Michael, I think you're giving him too much credit.

You're assuming he's a rational actor.

You know,

if he was a rational actor, he wouldn't have done half the things that he has done.

He doesn't care what people tell him.

He may listen for a couple of days, and then he'll, you know, his attention span will fade, and he'll get mad at the people around him who are saying, oh, Mr.

President, maybe we should just stay cool for a little while and he'll either fire them or he'll ignore them.

So, no, I agree.

I don't think Esper's long for this world.

Are you sure, Bill, that Tom Cotton's a real person?

I'm not sure about that.

He is.

And I think, you know, what's to stop Trump from going?

My new Secretary of Defense is Tom Cotton, because I already know that he's on the page of using the 101st airborne.

He's a senator from America who wants to use American military people to fire on American citizens.

He said so anyway.

Right, because Antifa is this new enemy.

Last week it was the post office.

Now we've gone to Antifa.

They're apparently more dangerous than Joe Scarborough.

And I don't even know if they're a real thing.

Well, when Antifa and the post office start conspiring together, boy, that's scary.

Bad stuff got to go hide in the bunker.

So

this lockdown that we've been living with, do you agree with me?

Probably not.

That this has a lot to do with the unrest in the streets, that when you coop people up and they have no hope and no jobs, that they really what why not go out in the streets and um i wonder what america will look like what what a police department look like if they have to fight this all the time it's like a fire our firefighters here sometimes have to fight fires for seasons on end uh

i feel like this experiment this restless ex reckless experiment of closing down an entire country for months at a time is not not going to look good in the future.

And this is one reason why.

Yeah, I can see that, but I think, Bill,

that position, for me at least, is a little bit tempered by the circumstances.

Absent the murder of Mr.

Floyd, of George Floyd on May 25th.

Yeah, there was restlessness and there were, you know, folks out there, you know, egged on by Trump talking about liberate Minnesota, Wisconsin, or whatever.

But the vast majority of Americans, despite their frustrations with it, saw the rationale, approved and agreed that they would rather not risk their health.

They would rather not have the country open up too soon.

Now, when you layer on top of that

the blatant murder of an individual,

What I have found that people have decided, you know what, that's a bridge too far.

And they're not out there protesting about opening up the economy.

They're out there protesting about the murder of this man and the impact it has had on our civil society.

But they're wearing their masks.

So

there's still this consciousness, despite the fact that we're not talking about COVID-19, that people are still in the back of their minds as they're marching and protesting, aware that there is a risk involved here.

But in this instance, they're willing to take that risk, whereas they weren't willing to take that risk four weeks ago to go to church or some other event.

Yeah, Bill, I guess I see it a little bit differently.

I do think, no question about it, the pandemic and the economic collapse that resulted from that are sort of the dry tinder that was there already, you know, that meant that when we got the video that emerged on the killing of Ahmaud Abari, when we got that insane lady in Central Park who called the police on the black guy was bird watching.

Bird watchers are very scary.

You know, and then on top of that, the death of George Floyd, et cetera, that that was just like lighting that dry tinder on fire.

But I don't so much think it was the shutdown as such.

I think there are a couple of different things going on.

One is the, you know, the fact that the disproportionate number of deaths from COVID have been among people of color and the poor.

And it does seem to me, and I imagine it seems to many other Americans, that if it was a bunch of white GOP voters in the suburbs who are dropping dead from COVID in massive numbers, that maybe the White House's response would have been a little bit different.

So I think there's that as a sort of a baseline sense of just distress of so many deaths, so much suffering, so much fear.

And then on top of that, you know, people hit hardest by the economic collapse, you know, are not people like us.

We're lucky, we get to keep our jobs and we get to do Zoom stuff from home, but the people who either got laid off because they worked in the service sector and their jobs just went away or who had to keep going to work even though they felt like they were risking their lives and their families' lives because they couldn't afford to go without those paychecks.

And so you've got that level, and that has something to do with deliberate policy choices made by the Trump administration, deliberate policy choices made by this country in terms of the lack of a safety net for people, in terms of the lack of health insurance, in terms of the lack of paid sick leave.

So I don't see it so much as the shutdown as such,

but just the combination of the deaths, the fear, the insecurity, the economic desperation.

And then you add

the insult and injury and pain of these killings.

Well, just a little perspective on that.

I mean, we've also lost 100,000 small businesses already and they have been disproportionately black.

It all is about what in the long run is going to cause more death.

The head of the UN said a couple of weeks ago he expects hundreds of thousands of children to die because of what we did to the economy.

I know they're not all American, so they don't count as much to Americans, but I think that matters somewhat.

I know we talked a lot in the media recently about the 100,000 mark.

I wonder if people realize that hospital-acquired infections

kill how many every year?

100,000.

No headlines.

We seem to have just focused on this one thing.

There's a lot of things that can kill you.

I wish nothing could.

But it wasn't inevitable that the economy economy be shut down.

And we've had pandemics before.

And there was one in 68, there was one in 57 that killed over 100,000.

I never even heard of them because we didn't have social media then and the internet and the media stoking this and causing this incredible fear.

And so we didn't shut down the economy.

Yeah.

That's true.

But I also think that time, place, circumstances, you're right.

Back in those, at those times, you did not have the social media network and the other elements that sort of drive the narrative and hype up the information that people are getting to the point where they respond and act.

But you also have to consider the nature of the diseases involved, the ability of individuals to

become infected.

to spread that disease and this is unlike those in that regard.

It fundamentally and dynamically changed the way the society would operate and function, and we would be

allowed to function in that society with this particular virus out there.

And I think that was a major driving consideration for the folks at my alma mater at Johns Hopkins and the CDC and elsewhere.

And looking at this particular virus, they did not know exactly how this strain would behave and what it would do.

So to that extent,

given the fact that it was airborne by droplets and within six feet, yeah, 80,000 people sitting in a stadium would be a problem.

300 people in a very intimate restaurant setting would be a problem.

And so they had to look at the economic impact as well as the medical impact of this particular virus.

And I think in the end,

to your broader point, Bill, going forward and looking at a disease like this or a virus like this, I think that is going to be a new consideration because now we've learned as we started to open up exactly what that frame of reference is for us going forward.

So, who do you think should be the vice president?

Who do I?

The next president?

The vice president for Joe Biden.

I mean, I've heard a lot of talk about it this week because, in light of recent events, they're saying somebody like Amy Klobuchar,

she's through.

Okay.

And Elizabeth Warren, it's probably not going to look good to have two white people over 70 on the ticket.

A lot of people are talking again now about Kamala Harris, even though she and Joe had that big dust up at the first debate.

But she was a prosecutor.

Val Demings

from Florida, African-American woman who was a police chief herself.

Where are you on this?

I just have no idea, but I just hope to God it's somebody who's really young and healthy.

That works, that works.

Well, I've been on the record for over a year now

since the week Joe Biden entered the race saying that he would be the nominee.

And then

later on suggesting based on the nature of the vice presidential choice and the role out there, that Amy Klobuchar would be probably a very strong pick given what Joe Biden needs to have happen next this November,

Given her recent issues relative to her role as a prosecutor in

Minneapolis

and so forth, I think that the shift, the light certainly is on the governor of Michigan, Governor Whitmer,

executive leadership, which is going to be very important over the next few years, having governed through coronavirus, had to make some tough decisions, and

understanding that relationship, particularly under this administration between the feds and the state and val um uh demings is is another one i think for my book the race is probably narrowed down to those two um and but i wouldn't give up on on amy i think that the the biden team rather like her okay and final question um whoever wins in november be it Trump or be it Joe,

there's going to be blood in the streets, right?

I mean, if Trump wins, I can't imagine the kind of demonstrations we saw the last week not repeating themselves.

And if he doesn't win, well, we already know what Trump's statement is.

I can read you his statement about the tough people.

I love that this is one of my favorite things he's ever said.

I have the support of the police, the military, the bikers.

You know, our third branch of government, the bikers.

I have the tough people, but they don't play it tough until they, meaning the Democrats, go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad.

That sounds to me like an invitation for the tough people to get in the streets.

I don't see this.

Yeah,

it is very bad.

It's very bad.

It's very scary.

I don't think he is correct that he's got the military and the police.

I'm a reserve police officer.

I'm a military spouse.

That's sure not what I'm seeing.

You know, I think that those communities are pretty diverse internally.

I also think that, and we saw this when Jim Mattis stepped forward, Admiral Mike Mullen stepped forward with statements just yesterday, the day before, whatever it was this week,

you know, a lot of people in the military and the police take very seriously their oath to the Constitution and take that more seriously than what some guy, you know, some not very stable, not very genius, but very sociopathic guy sitting in the White House happens to tell them.

I do think though that

they should be really, really scared.

And it should be a call to action and to planning right now because, you know, anybody who thinks, I mean, Bill, you've been saying this for a long time.

Anybody who thinks this guy is going to go gently into that good night is out of their mind or has been napping or something.

And people, every single viewer of this show needs to be asking themselves, especially if they work for the U.S.

government or state government in any capacity whatsoever, they need to be saying to themselves, what am I going to do when he orders?

the active duty military and the police into the streets to try to keep himself in office even though he lost.

What am I going to do then?

Because if you don't start thinking about that right now, when that time comes, you're going to do the wrong thing because that's what people do.

You know, things sneak up on them.

By the time there's a crisis, they go, oh, oh, whoops, uh-oh, oh, too late, missed my moment.

You know, that now is the moment to be saying, How do we keep that from happening?

How do we make it happen?

I'm going to get my golf club.

Go out there and hit them with a golf club.

All right, I got to leave it there.

Thank you very much.

Hope to see you in person very soon.

You got it.

Thank you, Bill.

All right, my final guest is the former FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence who now works as a national security analyst for NBC News, Frank Fagluzzi.

Frank, I've seen you a million times on TV.

You're always great.

I really appreciate you doing this.

My first question to you, sir, is

about the unrest we've seen in the streets.

Now, in the 60s,

the southern sheriffs and governors were always complaining about outside agitators.

Outside agitators, meaning people from the north who are part of the the civil rights movement, who are coming down to peaceably protest.

Seems like here in Los Angeles they're saying we've had a lot of outside agitators, that it was not mostly people from the area who were looting.

We hear sometimes that it's right-wing people who are posing as left-wing people.

We hear a lot about

shadowy groups that used to be in chat rooms like QAnon that are now in the streets.

You are the kind of guy guy who would know about this.

Who is it actually out there, do you think, in the streets causing trouble?

Yeah, it's important for us to take a really broad look at what's happening because there's a narrative going on that we have to kind of weed through.

First, it's essential to understand that all the police agencies are seeing a wide variety of groups, organizations, and individuals out there.

That's number one.

Number two, it's really important that we not fall into the trap that maybe certain sides are setting for us, that there is a widespread organized attack on America going on.

The reality is, Bill, that sometimes a guy who throws a brick through a window is just a guy throwing a brick through a window.

The vast majority of the violence and looting is occurring by what I call opportunistic criminals.

But indeed, there are serious groups intent on violence, discord, and even civil war out out there.

And they run the gamut.

But so far, even according to what the FBI is seeing and what the FBI is involved in arresting and prosecuting, it's the right wing that seems to be taking the lead right now on the violence and the weapons.

That's what worries me, is that we've seen groups like QAnon.

If people don't know who QAnon is, let me, and I'm sure you're very familiar,

let me read some of their beliefs.

They believe that a worldwide organization of Satan-worshipping pedophiles ruled the world.

They believe Hillary Clinton ran a pedophile ring out of a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C.

They believe Kim Jong-un in Korea, North Korea, is a puppet planted there by the CIA.

They believe Angela Merkel is the granddaughter of Hitler.

They believe all mass shootings are false flag operations, in other words, staged to get people to react against gun ownership.

And they believe in a coming storm where the Satan

worshipers will be exposed and then the military will take over.

So I'm sure they're happy about some of the things Trump has been saying this week.

What's so disturbing is that in Oregon, the Republicans have nominated for the Senate a QAnon believer, someone who believes this stuff, running for the Senate in America, and John Ratcliffe, who's up for Director of National Intelligence.

He has talked about QAnon in favorable terms.

Now they're in the streets and coming into the government.

What do you make of this?

So what we're seeing now is a fascinating phenomenon because the groups that currently truly existed almost entirely within the realm of social media and online have in these protests, they've found their real world opportunity.

And

it's really something we've not seen before because they're now hitting the streets and are acting out their bizarre theories and conspiracies.

So you combine the element of race, which is what has driven these protests, and now you have a perfect storm of people with bizarre ideas and often very dangerous, violent ideas who now have an opportunity to act out.

And to confuse things even more for law enforcement, they're pretending to be each other.

So you may have seen the reporting, for example, that a white nationalist group had actually opened a Facebook account pretending to be Antifa.

So the work of law enforcement right now is incredibly challenging.

And for us as consumers of information, we've got to be more intelligent than ever because it's going to get even more chaotic.

And you mentioned social media.

This is where, of course, they plot with each other and they can just say like a flash mob, hey, we're going to meet over here on this street and loot that next Thursday.

Or they can just, as you say, pretend they're a people that they're not.

Is it outrageous to consider if things get horrible to shut down social media?

I mean, we shut down the whole country for three months.

We've locked down, we've curfewed.

Is that a crazy idea?

I get very concerned about shutting down a public platform and essentially what has become our public square, particularly when it's in the control of the private sector.

I think we are currently looking at a president who would like nothing more, and he's demonstrated this, than to shut down and control media platforms.

So I say, let's look at an alternative bill.

Let's look at more of like what Twitter is doing, which is they're not suppressing speech, but rather they're saying with regard to the president, here's some more information.

Click on this link to get the facts about mail-in voting and fraud allegations, right?

I wish, for example, that Facebook was taking that lead.

And again, not suppressing free speech, but rather allowing us to see the president continue to devolve and disintegrate in front of our eyes, hear his mindset and intentions, but also give the consumer an opportunity to say, I'm going to click on this and get the truth and get more facts on this.

Okay, you know the FBI as well as anybody.

You know the top echelons, which you were a part of, and I'm sure you also know the rank and file.

I was talking to the panel before about Trump claiming

over and over again that he has the tough people.

He says he has the military.

He has the police.

He has the bikers.

We've heard before that, of course, he rails against the top echelons.

And they don't seem to like him in the military, in the police, in the FBI.

But what about the rank and file person?

Are they with Trump in these organizations?

Are there a lot of FBI agents?

When he was running, we heard the FBI was Trump Landia.

Where is that person now?

Yeah, Bill, I got to first respond to that by saying I'm actually deeply saddened that we even have to have this conversation.

Here's why.

The FBI, and in my 25 years there, I can attest to this, is deliberately an apolitical organization.

When FBI agents get together around the water cooler, they're talking about sports and their family and what they're doing this weekend, not politics.

So the very fact that we've gotten to the point in our society where we're asking about, hey, are there rank and file with this guy or not, is deeply troubling to me.

As you know, the FBI director has deliberately been limited to a 10-year term, although Trump has shortened that up for Jim Comey, a 10-year term because it's supposed to cross over administrations and be that apolitical nonpartisan entity.

So here's what's happening now.

When I hear people say, oh, the rank and file is with Trump and the leadership is not,

I give these facts.

Number one, the leadership of the current FBI has been handpicked by Trump.

Director Christopher Wray is a Trump appointee, and he seems to be doing his job.

Number two, the rank and file does get tired of getting bashed almost on a daily basis by this president when they come out and stop terror and stop kidnappings and stop organized crime and tend to get little or no credit for it from this White House.

So when you say things like, hey, the military rank and file might be with Trump, let's talk about this.

Trump has exonerated

Navy SEAL Chief Gallagher for allegations of war crimes.

Who reported those war crimes?

The rank and file against their own chief.

And we're probably going to see Navy chief Gallagher paraded around on campaigns during the campaign season.

So I get really, really careful when I respond to questions about rank and file versus leadership.

We know the leadership of the military just this week has come out and said they're deeply troubled about how they're being used and exploited by this president.

All right.

Well, that's pretty good to hear.

I'll take an optimistic note where I can find one.

Thank you for doing this, Frank.

Say hi to my friends at MSNBC for me, and I hope to see you in person real soon.

Stay well, Bill.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, time for new rules.

New rules.

No one here again.

Okay, new rule, if you're looting Target, wear a shirt.

Where do you think you are, Walmart?

Although I've got to give this guy credit, we may never find a cause that brings everyone together, but smashing the self-checkout scanner at Target with a claimmer is a start.

New rule, companies that include the little fancy spoon in a new set of flatware must stop.

We're a nation that's cracking apart at the seams and eats most of its meals from a greasy bag delivered by a transient.

Whatever the little fancy spoon was meant for, we've long since forgotten.

It just lies there in the drawer, a symbol of a gentler time, silently making us even more depressed.

New rule, the radical left Antifa leader who justified looting by saying one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression, and that looting is the natural result of decades of repression, needs to.

Oh, wait, that was Donald Rumsfeld talking about Iraq?

Never mind.

New rule, this isn't a mask.

It's a panty for your face.

I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure that of all the things that can block a virus, way down on the list is lace.

Although on the bright side, one less influencer.

New rule, someone has to tell Arizona State University that going online defeats the whole purpose of Arizona State University.

No one goes to ASU for the academics.

They go for the parties, the drugs, the hookups, the naked cheerleaders.

Plus, we already have Arizona State University online.

It's called the University of Phoenix.

And finally, new rule, hooray for the cracks that have finally emerged in the blue wall of silence.

Yes, eternal optimist that I am, I'm going to look on the bright side of fires and looting and the breakdown of all order in the United States and hail the police chiefs from across the country who knelt and marched with the protesters in Miami-Dade County and New York City and Santa Cruz, California, in Flint, Michigan, and lots of places.

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo even said he was outraged at Americans who don't see a problem.

This is new.

It wasn't that long ago, police never even admitted they did anything wrong.

Police Sergeant Howard Banks of Omaha said, It's all of us versus bad people and bad cops, and we want to get them out of the line of duty and police work.

Well, there I'm going to have to stop you because honestly, it's not quite that simple.

I mean, forever we've been talking about bad cops, you know, bad apples,

and then the vast majority of cops

good cops.

But the real new rule is you can't anymore get away away with this is a bad cop and any cops who aren't actually committing the crime are good.

The ones who watch and do crowd control for atrocities, they're not good either.

That has to be the new standard.

And it goes for all out-of-line behavior.

If your partner is doing something horrendous, you can't just watch and do nothing like the husband in a cuck video.

There's a meme that says nobody hates bad cops worse than good cops.

Okay, if you hate them so much, turn them in.

Because let's be real.

If there wasn't video of that murder, how do you think those other cops would have described that encounter?

It'd be, we found Mr.

Floyd unresponsive, so we administered CPR, blah, blah, blah, lie, lie, lie.

If you see something, say something.

Has to apply to police too.

You can't get away with crimes on account of being the people who are supposed to stop crimes.

And speaking of stopping crimes, we were a little slow to get to that in LA this week.

I mean, sometimes I feel like we're getting the worst of both worlds, the abusive part

of policing,

but without the law and order part.

I've said many times in discussing the police, civilization is a mile wide and an inch deep.

So when people say cops are all that stands between civilization and chaos, absolutely, I agree.

Cops are the badasses who deal with the dregs in an ugly business.

But if cops want us to give them a little extra room to be tough because they've got a bad, dangerous job, then they got to do the bad, dangerous job.

Which they have also done plenty of this week, to be fair.

This is tough stuff now.

But it was frustrating watching it on TV last Sunday.

Car 54, where were you?

It looked like Black Friday, but without cash registers.

I did see a guy in Santa Monica turning away looters, but it wasn't a cop, just a guy invoking a citizen's doorman.

And this young woman,

why,

Even under these very difficult circumstances for the police, is she having to do this in a country that that is teeming with police forces?

One thing America does not lack for

is police forces.

Local cops, state, county, highway, sheriff's department, federal marshals, ATF, DEA, FBI, TSA.

Oh, we got cops.

But this lady had to step up?

I try to understand as much as I can without being a cop

that it's not like the jobs most people have, and it's not.

When a voice on the radio says, man with machete on 15th and Maine, you have to go to 15th and Maine.

And I'm guessing cops rarely get called out to a redneck's front porch because the guy wants to tell you how well the marriage is going.

It's a dangerous job, yeah.

But I think we lose our battle with police misconduct when before a bad cop hits the streets because there's not enough vetting about who becomes a cop cop in the first place.

I swear to God, I think the root of the problem with bad cops isn't always racism.

It's high school.

How much of high school did you spend inside a locker should be question number one on the psych evaluation?

I've known quite a few cops in my day and others I've met for briefer encounters on the side of the road.

And they are mostly not that guy.

But that guy is who we have to weed out.

Instead of LAPD making the psych of all the last step in joining the force, make it the first.

So meatheads with a chip on their shoulder aren't given the license to perform urban executions.

Tough guys have to do tough things.

Right now, it's easy to spot the toughest police officers.

They're the ones telling their fellow cops, you got to stop this shit.

A crack has been made in the blue wall of silence.

Please let it break down even further, all together, or else we're going to be in the streets again and again, all the time.

And in LA,

that doesn't work because, you know, we're not really a walking town.

Okay, that's our show.

I want to thank my guests, Michael Steele, Rosa Brooks, Frank Foglusi, and Killer Mike.

We'll be back next week.

Thank you very much.

Good night.

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