America is watching on cspan, powered by cable. Im the Deputy Director of events at politics and prose where we host inperson and Virtual Events along with partner supported events and trips and classes. For a full list of everything go to our website politicsprose. Com. Id like to ask you all to silence your cell phones so as not to disrupt the event and asking everyone in the store right now to please wear a mask. If you do not have one, we have plenty available at the front of store. When we get to team for the q a. We have a mic standing right here next to the pillar. Its to your right and your left. And please speak clearly into that as we are recording this, both for our Youtube Channel and for cspan. At the conclusion of the event, we are going to ask for we are going to allow for a signing and line up at the podium and please give us room for postits on your book and flap for malcolm. Thank you for that. Once the event is complete we ask you to please fold up your chairs and lean them against something solid and so without further ado, tonight were very excited to welcome malcolm nance, celebrating the release of they want to kill americans, the militias, terrorist the and deranged ideology of the trump insurgency. Malcolm nance is engaging expert on terrorism, extremism and insurgency and multiple New York Times best selling author, the plot to america, and plot plot hes been called the Neil Degrasse tyson of counterterrorism. [applause] laughter and is considered one of the great africanamericans in espionage by the International Space museum. Spy museum. Thank you, sir. [laughter] Neil Degrasse tyson. And hes a counterterrorism analyst for nbc news. And joining us in conversation is arlena maxwell. And a commenter and speaker and writer, senior director programming for sirius xm and signal boost. She is the author of the end of white politics. How to heal our lib cal divide. Without further ado, please join me in welcoming them. [applause] hello, can you hear me through the mask . Do we use this, we use the mics and those. All right. You can hear me. Yes. Excellent. Perfect. Im so glad to see all of your faces even if its only half of faces. As i said i want everybody to be safe in here and dont want you to leave with anything other than critical information how to protect american democracy so we can be in agreement that were going to be jing in that effort to keep us all safe. Just to start us off. Im excited to see malcolm. First of all, thank you for coming and welcome back, malcolm, thats first nlt thank you very much. Thats the first thing. Malcolm, youve been over in ukraine, but thats not actually why were here today. Were here because we want to talk about the threats to americans democracy. In your book they want to kill americans, you say that when the election was called for joe biden, people celebrated in the streets literally, we remember the images of people dancing on cars, like weve overthrown a dictator like in other places and we all took a breath, maybe we were relieved, but you say that was premature and you say that this book is an early warning. So, what is the threat assessment, in your view, of this ongoing risk and threat to american democracy as you see them . Okay. Well, you know, i characterize it because everybody wants me to talk about ukraine a little bit and i did that today with marty for 45 minutes. So you can go listen to that. But when i was in ukraine, i was trying to uphold the eastern wall of global democracy. The bulwark that literally bums bumps up against russia which is a totalitarian state and every once in a while id hear news and id have to look and see whats going on on the western wall of democracy and thats whats going on back here. And what i would see from time to time has been pretty disturbing. Unfortunately, i wrote this book so that i could add to your angst. I dont think you have enough stress in your life, what with the Supreme Court and, you know, the january 6th hearings, as i always do, i tend to write books that are predictive analyses, and for those of you who dont know in the Intelligence Community, we dont really predict things, we actually do these analyses that give you options and multiple pathways and sometimes the most likely and the most dangerous courses of action that our opponents take. However, in in particular book, as you said, everybody was out celebrating on, you know, january 4th, 5th and 6th, and what they thought was going to be a relatively quick count. Joe biden had been, you know, had been indicated that he was the winner. He wouldnt be declared until the 7th. But on the sixth of november, i went on real time with bill maher and bill was, to his credit, hey, obviously, biden has won. Theyre going to declare it in a few hours, but we need to understand what the trump voters anxiety was. We need to understand what they were upset about and then we need to reach out to them and do the kumbayah routine and he said, you know, we really need to shy away from doom and gloom. And dont ever use those words in front of me, okay . [laughter] thats a fulltime job for me, right . Doom and gloom. So i interjected, oh, you want ooh doom and gloom . Ill give you doom and gloom, how about the United States is headed into a full scale insurgency and he caught on right away. Insurgency you mean like iraq with saddam and everything. And i said yes, were talking about a sustained campaign, which is what an insurgency is, where one party takes the argument from the halls of power into the streets and uses para military, political and in some instances terrorism to destabilize a legitimate government and try to bring about the illegitimacy to them to show that they could not maintain security, they cannot maintain infrastructure. They cant maintain power and that they should be done away with in an insurgentbacked revolution of some sort or the other. When i said that at the time, thats what i was envisioning, but i wasnt envisaging it happening in 62 days. I knew it was going to happen, okay. But that night, i didnt. I just knew what these people were saying and what they had been saying for months was, that this election would come down to one of two things, if trump wins, it was very clear to me that the people who were these armed militias and its not just militias, its not just the Boogaloo Boys, and the keepers. After charlottesville, those groups were chased, they were being pushed down and they werent materializingment what was materializing were people who were supporting donald trump who decided that their way of protest was to come out with firearms. And then in the summer of 2020, the summer of george floyd, they were coming out with a lot of firearms. And you is an in louisville, kentucky about 200 marching up and down the streets, they were not the oath keepers, they were not the militia, they were locals exercising raw entim dags intimidation power that you would see from the other militias you would see on the trump enforcers. I realized this is much broader than it is. They have now been melded into a large body of people who were trump vote,who thought, i am going to exercise my right to protest by carrying a firearm and the implicit threat behind that and if you cause trouble, i will kill you. Dont come to me, im a firearms collector, i own a whole slew of practice weapons that, you know, i practice here in the United States if i have to use overseas, ar15s, ak47s, all kind of exotic things. Dont tell me marching up and down the street, body armor and camouflage and caring an ar15 with six or seven magazines is not intended to intimidate people. It only intended to intimidate people. If you were going to go with your words, dont tread on me flags or whatever else you want. And when i saw this phenomena, this is coming out against the george floyd protests, these were people that were viewing themselves as a counter balance and they were gaining Organizational Skills from the proud boys, the oathkeepers, the three percenters, but they were a fraction of what wed see hit the streets and we would see this in spade a few months later. As we were coming into 2020 and i was monitoring their internal communications and where they were chatting with each other, like the donald. Win later patriot. Win. It was pretty clear to see that she is people had in their minds with their firearms, they were going to gunman if donald trump won, the unofficial enforcers of his will. And if you want to call it, the brown shirts, or whatever, they were just going to be out in the streets in their trump flag parades with their trucks, and we saw them all over the place. Only this time theyd be carrying firearms and they would be pushing their agenda, which is a minority agenda, over the majority of the nation. But because the majority of the nation doesnt vote, you voted for them to have these firearms to come out and do that. So, that was one dangerous component of this. The other more dangerous components that i have predicted was that if trump loses, all of these people go underground for a period of time. And then they will internally organize into an insurgency where they will sit together and talk and have their patriotic shooting groups and go out to ranges and have picnics and shoot at nancy pelosi targets, which exists or theyll go out and theyll organize in support of donald trump. I knew that was coming. So the moment that it was clear that donald trump had lost the election, i went on air with realtime on bill maher and i just decided im not going to play this media game and lets reach out and lets take a breath, lets say that americas been saved. America wasnt saved, america was kicked hard into a new phase of american history, that we were kicked so hard that it looked like 1860 in some places. So i realized we were actually standing into a very dangerous period and so i did not pull my punch on that show, i said, we are headed into an insurgency, and the dot, dot, dot of that is insurgency leads to civil war, but i wasnt ready to say that, look im an intelligence analyst. When i tell and a collector, also, when i see things. I want to see context of it. Were there any precedence that lead me to believe that this is a viable threat . Well, there was enormous amount, but throughout the donald trump administration, we were seeing this transformation of the Republican Party away from a Political Party and into what could only be called a cult. I was a republican for a good part of my career. I was a colin powell style, strong on National Security, socially liberal conservative and on the xy axis, i would have been that little dot just above, up and to the right, but now, in the way that things have changed, im way down here to the left with colin powell, ronald reagan, Richard Nixon and the other hard core liberals according to the way that people are speaking these days. Thats because the party didnt move. The party is still there. Its transformed. The base has transformed itself into a completely different animal. And that animal is based on two things, the love of donald trump, boom, litmus test. Yes, no, neutral will determine how they treat you, right . And the other one was that you should be considered yourself a patriot who may have to take action and use force to make sure that your love of donald trump would be, well, seen by everyone, and that it would punish those who did not share that. That was just patently obvious. How obvious, malcolm . You said youre a gun collector. So obvious. All right, look, a firearms guy, spent my whole life around them. I was monitoring, you know, ammunition prices in the beginning of the covid outbreak and the george floyd protests, but by august of 2020, ar15 bullets had gone from 39 cents a bullet, which is really a bargain, all right . To on average of 1. 25 a bullet which was insane. It had never ever been there, even after the great massive newtown buyout. So much ammunition bought after newtown because they thought it was going to be regulated or boycotted that it went up to like 89 cents a round. Well, now, i mean, its come down to about 90 cents a round, but at one point, running up to this election, the belief that they would need every ar15 bullet in america led people to paid 1. 25 per bullet, which is crazy, right . So, especially if youre a gun collector, you know that thats insane and it was an indicator of a pathology out there and it wasnt that there was an ab absence of bullets, there are a lot of bullets, a lot of manufacturers, an enormous quantity of people buying ar15s and they were being told by, you know, gun enthusiasts, you know, or World Without rule of law enthusiasts and survivalists that you needed to have a minimum of 1,000 rounds of ammunition for each firearm that you have. And believe it or not,. 9 millimeter luger was even higher, it was crazy what was going on there. But these are really solid indicators that there is something happening here that we need to watch. So, i watched it. I started monitoring their chat rooms. I have a followup question. [laughter] could i just no, no, its related to what youre saying. So youre watching. Yeah. But i do want to refer to one thing you talk about in the book throughout. Yeah. Which is the acronym titus. So you say that its the trump insurgency in the United States and its an armed political cult preparing for this insurgency and its deny, attack avenge, fear. And so this is what youre watching. What i was watching was these people watching. Not the Boogaloo Boys or proud boys, theyre easy to watch and monitor. These guys are idiots. All of these waun abee special forces guy. Proud boys are street thugs, they started as a gang that was supposed it physical beat liberals on the street with your bare hand. Right . By george floyd summer everybody had an ar15. Everybody was rocking body armor, everybody was going out and spendinged 1,000 on a combat helmet and wearing size 52 pants multicam. That was very common by that point. But what was happening was that that name, that she said titus. Titus was forming and stand for the trump insurgents in the United States. And thats a given, it wasnt about being an oathkeeper and believing that the entire government is out to get you, right. Thats a given. It wasnt about Standard Operating Procedure and white supremacy, thats a given. Its about your loyalty to donald trump and if you were loyal to donald trump, you already subscribed to all of those things. You hated black lives matter, antifa was an enemy like alqaeda and isis that in your head you may have to have a gun battle with. Another thing that people were talking about quite a bit was they were talking about, you know, there was always the survivalist world, right . But they were talking about things breaking down so badly, as one good analyst on the internet says, World Without rule of law. Thats what they call it when theres a Natural Disaster and the cops arent there, you have to protect yourself. It got so bad there was actually a fire in oregon, just a natural fire broke out in oregon and this one town convinced itself that antifa had set the fire and was coming to the town to set more fires. So they just jumped up, got all of their guns, set up road blocks and check points into the town and unfortunately, two bloggers from, you know, from portland drove into this, right . It could have been bad. And of course, the way it was defused was the police did not arrest anyone. The police did not say put your weapons on the ground. Let me see your hands, at the check point with 10, 15 guns. The police said would you disperse, take your weapons home this is ridiculous and im not sure whether to this day this is ridiculous. It was you are not allowed to roadblock the road. Thats our job, right. But it was another indicator of the madness that was now taking over the titus that would become the titus, the trump insurgents. Now, why do i use that phrase collectively . Because in the Intelligence Community we like neat packages, but more importantly, it its better to identify your threat with a cool title. Like in syria or alqaeda, al jihad, but titus is a pretty solid acronym for people its all about donald trump. Its not about america, its about a version of america that exists right here. Right . Theres an old one second, theres an old story from the onion, where they a few years back which is now a documentary. Its a record for america and the story in the onion was, man pledges allegiance to the constitution in his head and its like a wild melange of the bill of rights, the declaration of independence and the pledge of allegiance that this man thinks is the constitution. All right . And its right. Its in his head. And all of this was a mass hysteria stemming from the really crazy word of donald trump, which was swarming the walls on their belief system and then enter q anon and i know youre going to get to this. This group was poised, ready and cocked on november 4th and when they didnt get what they wanted they denied reality, right, they believed that donald trump should just declare himself president , and then they lit a match that that showed you who titus was on january 6th. 40,000 people. By the way, ben shapiro really got mad when i said on bill maher that the park service had counted these people and there were 40,000 people at the rally. Donald trump said a million, right . But and then 10,000 of them attacked at the capitol. And you can see an easy two, three, 4,000 if you look down the steps on one spot and he was like thats a lie. You lie. There were not 40,000 people at that site. And i remember sitting there on bill mahers show looking at him going either this is an act or he never learned arithmetic or he thought it was a million. But he really, you know, hes propagandist so he doesnt know. When he does his angry chipmunk routine, right . So i thought, this is a level of denial thats dangerous and you saw titus emerge. The front end of those people were the militias, the terrorist groups, the proud boys, the organizers. But the rest of them were not, members of those groups. I want to talk about january 6th specifically because youve explained in, you know, in detail all of the organizing that took place between the election and the election being called and what we saw on january 6th and i think throughout the hearings, the understanding that we have of what happened on the day has completely cha