Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. We're off for the holidays, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean we don't have a fantastic show for you
Speaker 1: today with some captivating interviews. January six insurrection survivor and
Speaker 1: author of Hold the Line, the insurrection in one Cops
Speaker 1: Battle for America's Soul, Michael Pinone tells us his thoughts
Speaker 1: on the aftermath of January six. But first we have
Speaker 1: author of Survival of the Richest, our favorite tech explainer
Speaker 1: and also a longtime friend, Doug rush Koff, is here
Speaker 1: to talk about Twitter and f t X. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, our favorite Doug Rushkoff. I'm so happy
Speaker 1: to be with you. I'd like to think of you
Speaker 1: as our tech billionaire correspondent. I'm sorry that was so me.
Speaker 1: No just tech, no billionaire, But in this case we
Speaker 1: have a billionaire. Tech in billionaires becomes synonymous, unfortunately, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: so we got to talk about what is happening here
Speaker 1: with Elon mush It's so funny. It is a weird week,
Speaker 1: isn't it. It's like I haven't had a week like
Speaker 1: this since like that the dot com bust, you know,
Speaker 1: and like March two thousand, it is it is wild.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're watching with Musk and it's funny because
Speaker 1: last time I was comparing him to uh, Charlie Sheen.
Speaker 1: This is like end stage, you know, Tiger Blood. We
Speaker 1: are watching the dissolution of this character. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: interesting for people who love him and I and I
Speaker 1: understand why some people do. What he meant. What he
Speaker 1: was thinking was not to get just to get Twitter
Speaker 1: and get Trump back on there and destroy the country.
Speaker 1: He was really thinking of Twitter to become this kind
Speaker 1: of everything platform. It would be our identity, our money
Speaker 1: at crypto and as well as a means of social control.
Speaker 1: But right it would be this kind of new operating
Speaker 1: system for society where Twitter isn't just a platform, it's
Speaker 1: kind of the protocols for this new sort of open standard,
Speaker 1: accelerationist libertarian future. But it's like Musk can't resist wanting
Speaker 1: to be the supervillain, you know, we just can't get
Speaker 1: so instead we get this kind of algorithmic skinner box
Speaker 1: to to stoke crowd rage and bring on just full crazy.
Speaker 1: So for him, Twitter is not really the prize. Chaos
Speaker 1: is the prize. It's the kind of the socio political
Speaker 1: turmoil that's generated by Twitter chaos, and Trump is like
Speaker 1: the driving force for this collapse oriented social change. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about this for a second, because clearly that
Speaker 1: is like in his head and he's like into the
Speaker 1: supervillain idea. And we saw this reporting today where he
Speaker 1: said we're not moving the business to Texas because it's
Speaker 1: not going to be right wing, it's just going to
Speaker 1: be non left wing, which I think is an important
Speaker 1: thing he's trying. I mean, again, I don't think what
Speaker 1: he's saying is true. I'm not even sure what he's saying.
Speaker 1: He thinks he's true right like it seems to me
Speaker 1: like but and again it's impossible to know what looks
Speaker 1: in the hearts and minds of any of these people.
Speaker 1: But it is interesting to me he can't say he's
Speaker 1: right wing because he's worried it will undermine the site.
Speaker 1: So he does still have when he clearly is right,
Speaker 1: he's only he's only participating in that very small sliverer
Speaker 1: of right wing Twitter. So my question to you is
Speaker 1: there clearly are some financial concerns here, right he's got
Speaker 1: this Tesla stock. The stock is losing value and the
Speaker 1: dead it is piling up. I mean, you know, he
Speaker 1: is not a magical supervillain, so he has bills to pay.
Speaker 1: So can he this going or does it just crash
Speaker 1: and burn in a month? It's hard to say. I
Speaker 1: look at him more as a puppet than a puppet master,
Speaker 1: and I don't think he quite interestalizes it. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's got a lot of money, but you know his
Speaker 1: second biggest partner in in Twitter is what Prince al
Speaker 1: Walid been Tellal from Saudi Arabia who rolled over from
Speaker 1: the earlier investment. So he's got a partner, no, but
Speaker 1: he added more. What does he want? You know, Saudi
Speaker 1: Arabia has been trying to get oil off the dollar
Speaker 1: standard for a super long time. They are certainly no
Speaker 1: friends of America right now. You know, this guy, this
Speaker 1: prince is the one that gave Juliani a ten million
Speaker 1: dollar check after nine eleven along with advice that America
Speaker 1: evaluate its own policies in the region. Right, So we
Speaker 1: kind of gave it back, right. So here's a guy
Speaker 1: who wants to get us off the dollar standard, wants
Speaker 1: to get oil off it and is investing in a
Speaker 1: guy that wants to build sort of we chat money
Speaker 1: system total everything for America, and someone who's trying to
Speaker 1: bring on chaos and become kind of the techno monarch
Speaker 1: in this new kind of digital authoritarianism. What Musk is
Speaker 1: showing is that no, these kind of ceo testla skills
Speaker 1: are not transferable into monarchy, into running everything. You can't.
Speaker 1: He can't even run up freaking social network. He's not
Speaker 1: going to run a nation or or a planet. And
Speaker 1: that's because really his actual competence maybe was in marketing cars,
Speaker 1: but not not in this. There's no you know, generic
Speaker 1: ceo king like genius, where the skills are just are
Speaker 1: just transferable. Right. His ideas are basically stupid, Right, He's rich,
Speaker 1: he's not smart, certainly, not about civics, government, economics, society,
Speaker 1: or human psychology, you know, our public health. Musk is
Speaker 1: particularly bad at this sort of the way. Trump is
Speaker 1: particularly bad being president. I don't think his empire is over.
Speaker 1: He's still got his rocket ships, he's still got his cars.
Speaker 1: He's still is just one giant debacle. I guess it
Speaker 1: undermines the market, the stock market's faith in his continuing
Speaker 1: ability to kind of pull a rabbit out of a hat.
Speaker 1: So like, if they see, you know, Tesla sales reaching
Speaker 1: a plateau, they might no longer believe, Oh, Musk has
Speaker 1: the mightas touch to get us through this next thing.
Speaker 1: And when at CEO loses the mightus touched. You know,
Speaker 1: if Steve Jobs really lost the mightas touch at some point,
Speaker 1: I guess he did an Apple, you know, Apple would
Speaker 1: go down until they brought him back. So that's a
Speaker 1: really good point. I mean, he sort of can be
Speaker 1: a wide ranging supervillain until the investors calling the dad right,
Speaker 1: just like until you know, Trump is a supervillain until
Speaker 1: we we vote him out. But then the real question
Speaker 1: is is he just you know, I always know Charlie
Speaker 1: Sheen was to you know, it is to Trump as
Speaker 1: Trump was to Musk. But what about if you think
Speaker 1: about it as Musk is sort of version one point
Speaker 1: oh of techno monarch, just like Trump was kind of
Speaker 1: version one point oh of authoritarian insane president, just as
Speaker 1: someone like de Santis, say, can come in and be
Speaker 1: a slightly more reasonable looking and competent version of Trump.
Speaker 1: Maybe you know, I'm more scared of a desantist president Trump.
Speaker 1: What if someone like Peter THEO comes in and is
Speaker 1: musk two point Oh, you know, Teal could use Musk
Speaker 1: kind of as the beta test and sacrificial lamb to
Speaker 1: use Teal's no language of scapegoating for his own strategy
Speaker 1: to be a techno monarch. But most of these guys,
Speaker 1: I think once they get in charge, they kind of
Speaker 1: reveal themselves as having these weird child brains. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, I mean that is the thing you
Speaker 1: know that's been so disappointing to me is that I've
Speaker 1: for so long thought being married to a nice VC
Speaker 1: that technology would solve all our problem this and I
Speaker 1: think like this guy is one of the great brains
Speaker 1: behind it, Elon Musk. We're all in a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1: So we need to talk about this text message, right.
Speaker 1: We don't know who it's from, this uh text message congratulations.
Speaker 1: The article about was laying at some of the things
Speaker 1: that might happen. Step one, blame the platform for its user,
Speaker 1: Step to coordinate pressure campaign, Step three, accodus of blue chap,
Speaker 1: step forward platform NG, it will be a war. Let
Speaker 1: the battle begin. What do you think this means? I
Speaker 1: think it means they think that somehow there's a left
Speaker 1: wing conspiracy trying to fight the truth and justice. You
Speaker 1: know that Alan Musk is trying to bring to our world.
Speaker 1: But it's not right, I mean clearly. But the thing
Speaker 1: that I'm curious about here with this is Okay, So
Speaker 1: the idea here is that he brings back and we've
Speaker 1: already seen he's bringing back Trump. He brought back this
Speaker 1: uh Andrew whatever his name is, this British boxer who
Speaker 1: had been taken off the platform. He's brought back a
Speaker 1: lot of those kind of people. He won't bring back
Speaker 1: Alice Jones because he had a baby that died, so like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a right wing but with like a
Speaker 1: little bit of like wacky billionaire with the backstory. And then,
Speaker 1: by the way, that was an amazing interaction where he
Speaker 1: was like I had a baby that died. At all
Speaker 1: the comments were like how dare you not bring Alex
Speaker 1: Jones back? Like instead of like we're so sorry you
Speaker 1: had a baby that died. I mean, like incredible stuff,
Speaker 1: right exactly, No, no, well deserved, but like you, the
Speaker 1: Leopards are more than happy to eat his face. But
Speaker 1: the thinking here is he's gonna bring all the right
Speaker 1: wing people back. But what I don't think he understands.
Speaker 1: And again I could be wrong, but this is just
Speaker 1: my sense. If you're you have CBS posing tweeting right,
Speaker 1: because of the fact that there's now you know, they're
Speaker 1: all these blue checks who are you know, not necessarily verified,
Speaker 1: So there's no sense like you could certainly have an
Speaker 1: imposter who would just look like you and there'd be
Speaker 1: no way to verify it, and they're is not. You know,
Speaker 1: he's cut average. You know, he's cut the people who
Speaker 1: deal with advertising. He's cut the people who deal with technology. Right.
Speaker 1: So my question is when we're in this world where
Speaker 1: we have so few of the people that advertisers would
Speaker 1: need and also news outlet its would need, if he
Speaker 1: brings back all those people, won't we see less and
Speaker 1: less news outlets And won't that lead to just sort
Speaker 1: of him taking Twitter and making it truth social? Yeah,
Speaker 1: if he could, I mean that's the thing. But Trump
Speaker 1: doesn't even want to join. Oh my god, it's like
Speaker 1: they signed on, you know, Howard Stern on x M,
Speaker 1: and then he goes, I'm not going to do the show.
Speaker 1: So it's like all this all this stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: Trump was going to be as headliner. That's like getting
Speaker 1: you know, Brittany and Vegas or something. It's like, now
Speaker 1: you've got nothing, What are you gonna How are you
Speaker 1: gonna open your hotel? Didn't he know that? Because Trump
Speaker 1: has this deal with true social where he has to
Speaker 1: appear on that platform eight hours before or twelve hours before.
Speaker 1: You would a thunk so right, But these are again,
Speaker 1: these are like children with post it notes up in
Speaker 1: their little brains. They're they're not thinking, and so you
Speaker 1: think he just thought, I'll just get it'll be too
Speaker 1: much of a he'll want to do it, and he
Speaker 1: won't care about the money. Of course, it's too tempting,
Speaker 1: it's too many millions of people. He'll fold in. He'll
Speaker 1: he'll do an auto thing where maybe he'll be on
Speaker 1: his own thing, but every one of his tweets will
Speaker 1: you know, automatically robot onto Twitter or something. You know.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he was thinking, thinking that and thinking that
Speaker 1: that that he would save it. But it's odd. It's
Speaker 1: like aln Is turning Twitter whatever it was, some sort
Speaker 1: of you know, bastardized news thing into you know, full
Speaker 1: on Jerry Springer. I think in the belief that you know,
Speaker 1: and he said this entertainment wins. Whoever is the most
Speaker 1: entertaining wins. So even if it's a car crash, people
Speaker 1: won't be able to not look. They will come. And
Speaker 1: I think people are kind of because the whole world
Speaker 1: is a car crash. I think we are sort of
Speaker 1: not looking. It's like enough already. I mean, if we
Speaker 1: learned anything from the mid terms, I mean that's the
Speaker 1: mid terms, we learned that the American people don't like it.
Speaker 1: They don't like Trump, they don't like carry like, they
Speaker 1: don't want those people. You know. Yes, in Mississippi you
Speaker 1: can a lack whoever you want as long as they're Republican,
Speaker 1: but in most places it doesn't fly. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I just wonder, like basically Elon's you know, move is
Speaker 1: to double down on Trumpism, and I'm not sure that's
Speaker 1: a winner. No, And it's it's odd and there's there's
Speaker 1: like a confluence of events that are working against him,
Speaker 1: you know. Musque and Teal were also part of this
Speaker 1: sort of long termism idea that you can do whatever
Speaker 1: ship you want now as long as you know it's
Speaker 1: gonna make you money, you know, so that you can
Speaker 1: you can pay a little bit of money to charity.
Speaker 1: You know, that's their effective altruism thing. And it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what happens now as long as you're getting the
Speaker 1: money and stuff you need for the rocket ships or
Speaker 1: artificial intelligences or whatever it is. It everitor is in
Speaker 1: the few. Sure, And when f t X the cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: went down, it was kind of like, oh, wait a minute.
Speaker 1: You know ft X is you know, run by Sam
Speaker 1: bankmn Freed, this SPF guy, who's another one of them, right,
Speaker 1: he's another one of the guys. But they are saying, well,
Speaker 1: Sam is a Democrat and so it's different, but he
Speaker 1: really is that same kind of idea, and isn't Ellen
Speaker 1: heavily invested in crypto too? Of course, this was an exchange,
Speaker 1: except instead of working like crypto was supposed to work,
Speaker 1: where everybody kind of has wallets of their own stuff,
Speaker 1: it was working like a bank. Right. It wasn't even
Speaker 1: a brokerage house that was holding the crypto in people's accounts.
Speaker 1: It was just taking people's money and then betting on
Speaker 1: other stuff. You know, thirty two billion dollars disappear, and
Speaker 1: and they were pretending they were like a robin hood figure.
Speaker 1: They were pretending they were like Alan Musk, you know,
Speaker 1: empowering the little guys with crypto against the big banks.
Speaker 1: But but they basically were a big bang ache, you know.
Speaker 1: And all you have to do when you have a
Speaker 1: big bank that is built on nothing, which is what
Speaker 1: they what they had, is undermine the trust in this
Speaker 1: kind of socially constructed value pyramid and then it collapses
Speaker 1: because there's nothing in them. Right. And this is where
Speaker 1: you know, and where the Democrats and the and the
Speaker 1: crazies are kind of at odds. The Democrats use real money, right,
Speaker 1: the government there's a difference. Well except for the Democratic
Speaker 1: senator who got involved in this. We will save her
Speaker 1: for another time. But yes, continue on. I guess what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is crypto. And I understand crypto. Believe me.
Speaker 1: People say doesn't understand. No, I understand crypto better than
Speaker 1: they do. The difference between crypto and money, Yes, both
Speaker 1: are Fiat invented currency. But you need to pay your
Speaker 1: tax with money, and because you have to, it means
Speaker 1: then that everyone has to convert in two dollars in
Speaker 1: order to you what's real, which sorry, which is paying
Speaker 1: your taxes, death and taxes are real. Right, So if
Speaker 1: you have to pay your taxes with money but nothing else,
Speaker 1: it means that in order to pay your taxes, at
Speaker 1: some point you've got to take your poker chips and
Speaker 1: go to that cashier's window and turn it into money.
Speaker 1: Until then it's chips. If the casino goes out of business,
Speaker 1: your chips are worthless. There's no window to go to write.
Speaker 1: The crypto are like these sort of you know, match
Speaker 1: sticks in a prison camp. They only work in the
Speaker 1: camp on the poker table. Right. If you take the
Speaker 1: poker chips and then go to the store, they will
Speaker 1: not give you cigarettes, right, so you know you could.
Speaker 1: The only reason you were at one point able to
Speaker 1: pay for Tesla's with bitcoin. I don't know, I think
Speaker 1: he allows that anymore, was because all that really meant
Speaker 1: was that someone could buy a car without cashing in
Speaker 1: their chips, likely because they're a drug lord or an
Speaker 1: arms dealer, or want to launder their money by purchasing things. Right.
Speaker 1: So the real story with FTX is that a journalist mentions,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think they're really capitalized. Wow, this
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be good, and then their competitor, Binance
Speaker 1: are the ones that took them down. You know, they
Speaker 1: basically pulled a Musk. Remember when Musk, you know it
Speaker 1: was gonna buy Twitter and then he wasn't, and then
Speaker 1: Twitter stock kind of crashed. That's what they did. What
Speaker 1: finance did and said, oh, you know, we're gonna maybe
Speaker 1: help FTX out or maybe we'll buy them. And then
Speaker 1: they popped the hood and they go, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is terrible. Right, they knew what was going on,
Speaker 1: and then they announced, oh, we can't invest in this.
Speaker 1: And that's what crashed them, is that their competitors said, oh,
Speaker 1: we're pulling out all our holdings. That is incredible. I know,
Speaker 1: they took him down, right, they took him down. But
Speaker 1: all of these guys, and this is this is the
Speaker 1: part I think that makes us so sick that all
Speaker 1: of them are part of this effective altruism movement, you know,
Speaker 1: which is basically saying, do as much ship as you want,
Speaker 1: you know now, as long as you pay to do
Speaker 1: good things later. Right. But I Han is not part
Speaker 1: of this effective altruism. Well, he's part of the long
Speaker 1: termism movement. I mean he considers himself to be. But
Speaker 1: I mean you don't see I mean he and he's
Speaker 1: sort of trolled with the world hunger stuff, but he
Speaker 1: never did it right. But he is a long termist.
Speaker 1: He's a person who believes that the forty trillion post
Speaker 1: human cyborgs out in the universe in the future matter
Speaker 1: more than the eight billion people alive today, you know.
Speaker 1: So he's in that same ends justifies the means quasi eugenic,
Speaker 1: you know, vision quest that the other ones are on
Speaker 1: ignore conditions on the ground, you know, get filthy rich
Speaker 1: through whatever you have to to build a universe for
Speaker 1: the post human robot people, you know. And it's all
Speaker 1: that I'd gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today.
Speaker 1: All right, So Doug, let's do a little prediction. You
Speaker 1: have to get this right now. I promise not to
Speaker 1: bring it up next time you come on. But I mean,
Speaker 1: just like, pretend with me. Where do you think this goes?
Speaker 1: I think it's all good. No, but I mean with Twitter, Like,
Speaker 1: so Ellen now has he has all this debt, he's
Speaker 1: bringing back Trump, He's trying to drive traffic. He thinks
Speaker 1: traffic will save him. Will traffic save him? No? These
Speaker 1: are ghettos. Look at Facebook is already like my space
Speaker 1: right or friends stir? You know, no, this is over.
Speaker 1: This is over. When Twitter was over. The minute that that,
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg went on TV and said Web three is
Speaker 1: going to replace Web two, Web two was over. It's
Speaker 1: a graveyard. So what do you do? You know now
Speaker 1: he's basically staging demolition Derby's on there in order to
Speaker 1: get some eyeballs, right, you know, it's if you're gonna
Speaker 1: see you know, live snuff. God knows what they're going
Speaker 1: to stream there to try to get the last views.
Speaker 1: But no, there's no it's just gonna take more people
Speaker 1: like us saying, you know, I actually have no I
Speaker 1: have no reason to be there. You know I don't,
Speaker 1: and that it's okay, you know, And that's the other thing.
Speaker 1: A lot of people have got a podcast. I gotta
Speaker 1: stay on Twitter because otherwise, you know, no one's going
Speaker 1: to find me on my discover ability in law and
Speaker 1: you don't think so, I really don't, you know. And
Speaker 1: also the discoverability on there, it favors discoverability of your
Speaker 1: of your competitors rather than you. You know, it doesn't,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really, I don't know who it really it helps.
Speaker 1: These are not long tail you know, decentralized things. I
Speaker 1: think people are going to do better. Gosh, I mean,
Speaker 1: where do people really spend their time now? You know
Speaker 1: the kids, they're in discord servers. They're small communities. You know,
Speaker 1: even Mastodon sort of does that better than a single
Speaker 1: generic global platform. People are realizing it's just not that
Speaker 1: much fun. You know, who knew who needs it. It's
Speaker 1: so interesting. We have to cut you off because this
Speaker 1: is the longest I'm ever allowed to go, and Jesse's
Speaker 1: gonna have a total heart attack, but he likes you
Speaker 1: so much that we've known the emperors had no clothes
Speaker 1: for a super long time, and now they're like ripping
Speaker 1: them off right in front of us there, non closed.
Speaker 1: So interesting. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. Michael Phenone is a January six Insurrection survivor
Speaker 1: as well as author of Paulled the Line, The Insurrection,
Speaker 1: and One Cops Battle for America's Soul Welcome Too Fast Politics, Michael,
Speaker 1: Thank you guys for having me on. So I want
Speaker 1: to talk to you about your incredible arc in your life.
Speaker 1: You were DC police officer. You know, how are you
Speaker 1: feeling now? How recovered are you? I mean, like I
Speaker 1: said earlier. I'm getting by and then I wish I had, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, more upbeat or positive response for you. But
Speaker 1: I'm fortunate I recovered from the physical injuries I sustained
Speaker 1: on January six. I've come to terms with that day,
Speaker 1: and I'm proud of what I did and what hundreds
Speaker 1: of other police officers did on January six one. But
Speaker 1: you know, I'm still kind of circumnavigating my life after
Speaker 1: that and trying to figure out, well, one, what the
Speaker 1: hell am I going to do to earn a living?
Speaker 1: Number Two? What the hell did I do all this for? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about that. So you're young,
Speaker 1: you found yourself surrounded by these rioters, you were teased
Speaker 1: so many times, you had a heart attack and beaten
Speaker 1: with a Blue Lives matter of flag. If that isn't
Speaker 1: like the peak of irony, I don't know what is.
Speaker 1: I mean, you must have like physical repercussions from this experience, right,
Speaker 1: I mean as far as the injuries themselves, no, I
Speaker 1: mean if you're talking about mental and psychological ours, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean it was a horrifying event, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: only exacerbated by the fact that the people responsible have
Speaker 1: not been held accountable, and I don't see the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice moving in that direction in a way that
Speaker 1: I feel is responsible or reasonable. Quite frankly. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about that. You know, you voted for A
Speaker 1: Trump in two thousands sixteen, and you then were injured
Speaker 1: by these people who wanted Trump to stay in power
Speaker 1: even though he had lost the election. You've testified and
Speaker 1: testified and testified and sort of put yourself on the
Speaker 1: line to sort of be able to provide testimony, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious to know some of the lower level
Speaker 1: people have been punished. I mean, the people that were
Speaker 1: there that day that committed crimes on the Capitol grounds.
Speaker 1: They've been indicted, arrested, Some have been tried and convicted.
Speaker 1: Others have pled guilty. So yeah, within the four corners
Speaker 1: of the event um that is the insurrection at the
Speaker 1: Capital on January six there has been a limited amount
Speaker 1: of accountability. That's not why testified before Congress, and that's
Speaker 1: not why I've continued to speak out. It's to hold
Speaker 1: those who orchestrated that event responsible. So let's talk about that.
Speaker 1: Who who are those people? Listen, I've sat through every
Speaker 1: single one of the Select Committee's hearings, and at the beginning,
Speaker 1: even on January seven, I would have told you that
Speaker 1: I felt Donald Trump was morally and ethically responsible for
Speaker 1: the events at the Capitol on January six. Having heard
Speaker 1: the evidence as presented by the Select Committee as a
Speaker 1: result of their thorough investigation, it was clear to me
Speaker 1: that Donald Trump and his allies bear criminal culpability. They
Speaker 1: engaged in an effort to defraud the American people. Their
Speaker 1: intention was to call the election fixed and a hoax
Speaker 1: long before the first ballot was ever cast. And that
Speaker 1: effort to defraud the American people, in conjunction with some
Speaker 1: of his allies, namely Roger Stone, and his coordination with
Speaker 1: members of the Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, and Three per Centers,
Speaker 1: also showed me that part of that plot was to
Speaker 1: engage in violence on January six to disrupt Congress's certification
Speaker 1: of the electoral votes. It is sort of interesting. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of us are hoping that the d
Speaker 1: j will act, you know, will indict that sort of
Speaker 1: higher you know, the people that are sort of higher
Speaker 1: level who helped organize I mean, do you think they
Speaker 1: will know? And I get a lot of criticism when
Speaker 1: I come out and say that I think that Merrick
Speaker 1: Garland needs to grow a pair and pursue justice in
Speaker 1: this case. But I think a lot of people forget
Speaker 1: I was a cop for twenty years and I worked
Speaker 1: in the District of Columbia. I was a street cop.
Speaker 1: I worked in narcotics. The prosecutors who prosecute crimes in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Are the Department of Justice. The United States
Speaker 1: Attorney's Office is our community prosecutors. For lack of a
Speaker 1: better term. I'm well versed in the way things work
Speaker 1: within the United States Attorneys off US, and I know
Speaker 1: how political things are in the upper echelons of that agency,
Speaker 1: just like any other government bureaucracy. And I think that now,
Speaker 1: even more than ever, there's less likelihood of Donald Trump
Speaker 1: being prosecuted criminally because I think that many people feel
Speaker 1: as though Donald Trump has already suffered political persecution in
Speaker 1: that the mid term elections were a rebuke of his
Speaker 1: brand of politics, and so you know, rather than risk
Speaker 1: a divisive trial of a former president of the United States,
Speaker 1: they'll simply put it in the rear view mirror, just
Speaker 1: like the American people put the officers of January six
Speaker 1: in the rear view mirror. Explain to us why you
Speaker 1: think that's bad. Why what's bad? Put by I mean,
Speaker 1: I agree with you, but like why this put this?
Speaker 1: Putting it in the rear view mirror and not prosecuting
Speaker 1: Trump is why it's bad. What are the sort of
Speaker 1: larger implication I mean, aside from the fact that it
Speaker 1: was one of the most outrageous and embarrassing moments in
Speaker 1: our history as a country, it is bad because it
Speaker 1: sets an unbelievable precedent that a president sitting president can
Speaker 1: engage in criminal activity at a large scale involving multiple
Speaker 1: levels of the government, and that that criminal conspiracy can
Speaker 1: come to fruition in the form of, you know, a
Speaker 1: great deal of violence directed at members of our government,
Speaker 1: and that he can walk away unscathed. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to sort of get back to like your experience. So,
Speaker 1: I mean I think of like all the people I've
Speaker 1: known who have had these experiences where they've had like
Speaker 1: normal lives and then Trumpism has come in and really
Speaker 1: made them like an inadvertent celebrity, right, Like, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people like that, from the vin Men's
Speaker 1: to how is that for you? And what is it like?
Speaker 1: And do you sort of wish that you had never
Speaker 1: had this happened to you? I mean, I struggle with
Speaker 1: that all the time, but I don't have any regrets
Speaker 1: because I can't imagine myself knowing me doing things any
Speaker 1: other way. I regret the way that what I have
Speaker 1: said was received. I began speaking out in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of January six for one reason, and that was to
Speaker 1: advocate for the officers who I fought alongside of. I
Speaker 1: believe that they deserved recognition for their actions, and I
Speaker 1: wanted a true accounting for what happened and what officers
Speaker 1: experience was like that day. Unfortunately, in doing so, I've
Speaker 1: managed to alienate the greater law enforcement community, including many
Speaker 1: of my friends and former colleagues within my own department.
Speaker 1: Than along came the Republican Party and their attempts to downplay, whitewash, dismiss,
Speaker 1: or just simply lie about the reality of January six,
Speaker 1: And so I felt I was uniquely positioned in the
Speaker 1: fact that I had the experience that I had that day,
Speaker 1: and that it was all captured on bodyboarn camera footage,
Speaker 1: and so I felt like I had a unique opportunity
Speaker 1: to counteract that messaging, which was quite frankly hurtful to
Speaker 1: a lot of police officers in ways that Americans have
Speaker 1: yet to fully comprehend and understand. Can you say more
Speaker 1: about that? I mean, there's a lot of police officers
Speaker 1: from January six who are struggling with the reality that
Speaker 1: they could do something like that, participates in something like that,
Speaker 1: and then be vilified by half the country for doing
Speaker 1: nothing other than their job, and then have it play
Speaker 1: out day in and day out in American politics. If
Speaker 1: you thought police officers were jaded and cynical before January six,
Speaker 1: you can't even imagine what that does to someone who
Speaker 1: dedicates their life to public service for not a whole
Speaker 1: hell of a lot of pay and certainly not a
Speaker 1: lot of thanks or gratitude. In the aftermath of that,
Speaker 1: I've spent a lot of time talking about indifference within
Speaker 1: the law enforcement community and what we can do to
Speaker 1: avoid those pitfalls. Well acknowledging officers when they do things
Speaker 1: well and exceptionally well would do a great deal to
Speaker 1: combat the indifference that Americans have instilled within the law
Speaker 1: enforcement community. There were police officers who killed themselves after
Speaker 1: January sex. Yes, and some of them were my friends.
Speaker 1: They are ultimately casualties of January sex. They are. It's disgusting,
Speaker 1: absolutely disgusting to see the way that people have characterized
Speaker 1: the officers from January six and the officers who took
Speaker 1: their own lives as somehow being weak or incapable of
Speaker 1: handling the job or the difficult teas of the job.
Speaker 1: You know, that's not said about the hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of members of our military who take their own lives.
Speaker 1: And you know it hasn't been said about law enforcement
Speaker 1: officers in the past. But the way that police officers
Speaker 1: have responded to the capital have had to endure this
Speaker 1: um level of ingratitude and uh, really disgraceful reaction from
Speaker 1: people in this country. It makes me sick to my stomach.
Speaker 1: You have been a victim of a crime, right, You've
Speaker 1: been in law enforcement, You've testified, so you've been on
Speaker 1: a lot of the different sides of something like this.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious, like, what do you think that the
Speaker 1: government could do. I mean, what we really want, ultimately
Speaker 1: is for something like January six to never ever happen again.
Speaker 1: But but what do you think the government, what would
Speaker 1: you like the government to do. I want to see
Speaker 1: a criminal investigation into the orchestrators of the jay where
Speaker 1: a sixth insurrection. I think it's time that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: was named a target of that investigation. I think there's
Speaker 1: clear and convincing evidence to support that. I think that
Speaker 1: it's important that his allies and sycophants, individuals that engaged
Speaker 1: in pushing the lies about the election also be investigated.
Speaker 1: In addition to that, I think that it is important
Speaker 1: that the legislative efforts of the Select Committee make their
Speaker 1: way through Congress and be passed into law. You know,
Speaker 1: they have all stalled, and so the Select Committee's sole purpose,
Speaker 1: at least officially, was to ensure that the insurrection could
Speaker 1: not happen again, and we can't even get Congress to
Speaker 1: pass that into law. I think that the officers of
Speaker 1: January six need to be recognized in a grand fashion
Speaker 1: that's befitting of the sacrifices that they made that day
Speaker 1: and many continue to make by upholding their oath to
Speaker 1: the Constitution on a day when so many disgraced it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry that you had to go through this,
Speaker 1: and I'm so sorry that things are not moving the
Speaker 1: way they probably should. Yeah, it's just a sad time
Speaker 1: for for this country, and I mean unfortunately the midterm elections.
Speaker 1: While I think the media and many in the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party and Republican Party have tried to spin it in
Speaker 1: a positive light that you know, democracy one, democracy was
Speaker 1: on the ballot. Well, yeah, democracy was on the ballot
Speaker 1: I think, and maybe in some races, but in a
Speaker 1: lot of them, democracy one by point one percent of
Speaker 1: the vote, which is a horrifying thought. Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you'll
Speaker 1: come back, yes man, thank you for having me. That's
Speaker 1: it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday,
Speaker 1: Wednesday and Day to your the best minds in politics
Speaker 1: makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what
Speaker 1: you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep
Speaker 1: the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening. H