Director of events at politics and prose where we now host in person and Virtual Events along with partnered and supported events and classes. For a list of everything, you can go to our website at politics pros. Com. I would like you to silence your cell phones and we are asking everyone to please wear a mask. If you do not have one, we have plenty available at the front of the store. When we get to time for the q a, we have a mic standing here next to the pillar. It is to your right and your left. Please speak clearly into that as we are recording this both for our Youtube Channel and for cspan. At the conclusion of the event, youre going to ask for a signing, someone about the same podium. Give us room to get postits on your books and get them flat for malcolm. Thank you very much. Once the event is complete, we ask you to please fold up your chairs and lead them against something solid. Without further ado, we are excited to welcome malcolm nance , celebrating the release of they want to kill americans the militias, terrorism and to rage ideology of the trump insurgency. He is an expert on terrorism, extremism and insurgency and a multiple New York Times bestselling officer this author whose books include the plot to hack america and the plot to betray america among others. 30 year veteran of the combating terrorism program, he has been called the Neil Degrasse tyson of counterterrorism. [laughter] and he is considered one of the great africanamericans and espionage by the International Space museum. Spy museum. Thank you, sir. [laughter] Neil Degrasse tyson, yeah. He is a counterterrorism analyst for nbc news and msnbc. Joining in conversation tonight is maxwell, and msnbc political analyst, commentator and writer. She is the senior director of progressive programming for serious xm and the cohost of the radio show signal booster. She is the author of the end of white politics how to heal our liberal divide. Please welcome malcolm nance and ms. Maxwell. Can you guys hear me . You can hear me . Excellent. Im so glad to see all of your faces. I want everybody to be safe, i dont want you to leave with anything other than critical information on how to protect american democracy. So we will be joining to keep us all safe. Im so excited to see malcolm. First of all, thank you for coming and welcome back. That is the first thing. You have been over in ukraine but that is not why we are here today. What to talk about the threat to american democracy. In your book, you say when the election was called for joe biden, people celebrated in the streets. We are member those images of people on top of cars dancing as if we have overthrown a dictator like you see in other places. We all took a breath. We exhaled, maybe we were relieved. But you say that was all premature. You also say this book is an early warning. What is the threat in your view of the ongoing risk and threat to american democracy . Malcolm you know, i characterize Everyone Wants me to talk about ukraine, i did that today for 40 minutes so you can listen to that. But when i was in ukraine, i was trying to uphold the eastern wall of global democracy. The bulwark that bumps up against russia and spain russia. What i was over there, i would look over my shoulder to see what was going on on the western wall of democracy and that is what was going on back here. And what i have seen from time to time has been disturbing. Unfortunately, i wrote this books so i can add to your angst. I dont think you have enough stress in your life with the Supreme Court, the january 6 hearings. As i always do, i tend to write books that are predictive analogies. For those of you who dont know, and the Intelligence Committee community, we dont predict things. We have analyses they give you options and multiple pathways, sometimes the likely and dangerous courses of action that our opponents take. However, in this book, as you said, everybody was out celebrating on january 4, fifth and sixth and what they thought was going to be a relatively quick on the sixth of november, i went on real time with bill maher and bill was, to his credit, saying obviously biden has one and won and they will declare it, but we need to understand why truck voters were anxious and we need to reach out to them. We need to shy away from doom and gloom. Dont ever use those words in front of me. It is a fulltime job for me, doom and gloom. So you want doom and gloom, i will give you doom and gloom. How about the United States is heading into a fullscale insurgency . He said you mean like a rock, out with saddam and everything . A rock iraq, with saddam . And i said yes. One party will use political and sometimes terrorism to destabilize the legitimate government and try to bring about they cant maintain power and they should be done away with in an insurgent backed revolution of some sort of the other. When i said that at the time, that was when i was envisioning. But i was not envisaging it happening in 62 days. I knew it was going to happen, but that night i did not. I just knew what these people were saying and what they have been saying for months was that this election would come down to one of two things. If trump wins, it was clear to me that these armed militias, and not just militias, the proud boys or the oath keepers, three presenters, dutch percent a new phone number and on a new phenomenon was happening. After charlottesville they were being pushed down and they were not materializing. What was materializing were people who were supporting donald trump who decided their way of protest would come out. Then in the summer of george floyd, they were coming out with an lot. At that point you would see these big groups, for example in louisville, kentucky what about 200 of them were marching up and down the streets, they were not the oath keepers. Or the 3 militia. There were locals who were exercising the same intimidation power you would see from these other militias and what would become the base of the trump enforcers. But i realized this is much broader than it is. They have now been melded into a large body of people who were trump voters who thought im going to exercise my right to protest by carrying a fire alarm and the implicit threat behind that, which is, if you cause trouble i will kill you. I am a firearms your. I own a slew of practice weapons that i practice here in the United States and use overseas. Ar15s, ak47s, all sort of things. But dont tell me marching up and down the street, carrying an ar15 with six or seven magazines is not intended to intimidate. It is only intended to intimidate. If you had the power of your words, he would not need that. You would march with your dont tread on me flags or whatever. So when i saw this was coming out against the george floyd protests, these were people viewing themselves as a counter balance, they were gaining Organizational Skills from the proud boys, the oath keepers, the 3 ers. But they were a fraction of what we were sitting on the streets and we would see this in spades a few months later. In 2020, i was monitoring internal committee occasions, where they were chatting with each other, like donald duck when donald. Win, later patriot. Win. But it was clear to see that if he lost, they would become the unofficial enforcers of his will. They were going to be out in the streets with the trump flag parades and their truck and we saw them all over the place. Only they would be pushing their agenda, a minority agenda over the majority of the nation. But because the majority of the nation does not vote, you voted for them to have these firearms to come out into that. That was one dangerous component of that. The other, more dangerous component that i predicted was that if trump loses, all of these people go underground for a period of time and they will internally organize into an insurgency. They will sit together and talk and have their patriot shooting groups and go out to ranges and have picnics and shoot at nancy pelosi targets, which exists. Or they will organize in support of donald trump. I knew that was coming. So the moment it was clear that donald trump lost the election, i went on air with real time with bill maher and i decided im not going to play this media game of lets reach out, lets take a breath, lets say that america has been safe. America was kicked hard into a new phase of american history. We were kicked so hard it looked like 1860. I realized we were going into a dangerous period so i did not pull my punch on that. I said we are headed to a insurgency and the dot dot dot was an insurgency leads to a civil war. But i was not ready to say that. Im an intelligence analyst, when i see things i want to see the context. I want to see is there any precedent that leads me to believe this is a viable threat . There was an enormous one. But throughout the Trump Administration we were seeing this transformation of the Republican Party away from a Political Party and into what could only be called i was a republican for a good part of my career. I was a colin powell side, strong on National Security, and i would have been just above up into the right. But the way things have changed, i am way down here to the left with colin and Ronald Reagan and richard nixon, all of the other conservatives. That is because the party did not move. The party as transformed, the base has transformed itself into a completely different camp. Deaf a completely different animal and that animal is based on two things. A love of donald trump. Yes, no, or neutral will determine how they treat you. The other one was that you should consider yourself a patriot who may have to take action and use force to make sure your love of donald trump would be seen by everyone and that it would punish those who did not share that. That was obvious. How obvious . I am a firearms guy, i spent my whole life around them. I was monitoring ammunition prices during the outbreak and the george floyd protest. By august 20 20, ar15 bullets had gone from . 39 a bullet to an average of 1. 25 per bullet which is insane. It had never been there. Even after the great newtown buyout. There was so much ammunition but after newtown because they thought it would be boycotted. It went up to any nonsense around. Up to about . 89 per round. They believe that they would need every ar15 bullet in america lead people to pay 1. 25 per bullet. Which is crazy. Especially if you are a gun collector, you know that is insane. There were a lot of bullets, a lot of manufacturers. There were an enormous quantity of people buying ar15s and they were being told by gun enthusiasts, a World Without rule of law enthusiasts that you need a minimum of 1000 rounds of ammunition for each firearm you have. Nine millimeter was even higher, it is crazy what was going on there. These were solid indicators that there was something happening here we need to watch. So i watched it. I started monitoring their chat rooms. I have a followup question related to what you are saying. You are watching. I want to talk about one thing you referred to in the book throughout. It is the acronym titus, trump insurgency throughout the United States. This is what you are watching. Right. And what i was watching was these people organize. Not the proud boys, these guys are easy to monitor. These guys are idiots. They are all these want to be special forces guys. The proud boys are street thugs. It started as a gang that was supposed to beat liberals on the street with your hands. By george floyd summer, everybody had an ar15. Everybody was rocking body armor. Everybody was going out spending 1000 on a combat helmet and wearing size 52 pence pants. What was happening was that name , titus, was forming. That stands for trump insurgents in the United States. It was not being a Boogaloo Boys and wearing a hawaiian short a hawaiian shirt. It was not about being an a oath keepers and believing the government is out to get you. It was not about Standard Operating Procedures in white supremacy. That is a given. It is about your loyalty to donald trump. If you are loyal to donald trump, you already subscribe to all of those things. You hated black lives matter, anitfa was an enemy like a kind and isis. In your head, you may need to have a gun battle on gun battle. Another thing people were talking about, there is always the survivalist role. They were talking about things breaking down so badly, as one good analyst said, a World Without rule of law. When there is a Natural Disaster and the cops are not there. You have to protect yourself. It got so bad there was actually a fire in oregon, just a natural fire, and this one town convinced itself that anitfa sets the fires and was coming to the town to set more fires. They just jumped up, got all of their guns, set up roadblocks into the town and two bloggers from portland drove into this. It could have been dead could have been that. The police did not arrest anyone. The police did not say put your weapons on the ground, let me see your hands at the checkpoint. The police were like would you disperse . Take your weapon song. This is ridiculous. Im not even sure if they said this is ridiculous. It was, you are not allowed to roadblock these roads. It was another indicator of the madness that was now taking over , what would be, the titus. Why do i use that phrase . In the intelligence community, we like packages. It is better to identify your threat with equal title. Whatever you want to call it. Titus is a pretty solid acronym for people who it is all about donald trump. It is not about america, it is about a version of america that exists right here. There is any old story from the onion, a few years back, it is the record in america. It was man pledges allegiance to the constitution in his head. A wild malones of the bill of rights, the declaration of independence, and the pledge of allegiance this man thinks is the constitution. It is in his head. All of this was mass hysteria stemming from the clergy the crazy words of donald trump which was forming the walls on their belief system. Then enter qanon which is a crazy group. I know you will get to that. This all came together and was ready and poised on november 4. When they did not get what they wanted, they denied reality. They believe donald trump should declare himself president. They lit a match. That showed you who titus was. 40,000 people. Ben shapiro when i said on bill mark that the park service has counted these people. There were 40,000 people at the rally. Donald trump said one million. 10,000 of them attacked at the capital. You can see in a easy 2000, 3000, 4000 if you look down the steps on one spot. He was like, that is a lie. July. I remember sitting there thinking either this is an act or you never learned arithmetic or he thought it was one million. He is a propagandist so he does not know. He does is little angry chipmunk routine. I thought, this is a level of denial that is dangerous. You saw titus emerge. The front end of those people where the malicious and terrorist groups, the proud boys. The rest of them were not members of those groups. I want to talk about january sixth specifically because you explained in detail all of the organization that took place between the election and what we saw on january 6. Throughout these hearings, the understanding of what we have of what happened on the day has changed. I was unaware there was so much planning. It looked so much random than we know now. Talk about the planning, talk about what is happening behind the scenes and why it is dangerous going ahead for future elections. Planning was obvious to me. The january 6 committee is just getting to revealing what most analysts were seeing in realtime principally in november and december. I have been seeing a lot of these gun groups and patriots, range party groups get together and start saying you have got to get Tactical Training by the election. There were gun ranges, there was an ex navy seal running patriot classes. Who needs patriot classes in Close Quarter Battle . Who is going to have to come through a door and cleared a room in an urban warfare environment . Not someone who is shooting paper. Not someone who is trying to gain proficiency at it hundred yards. That is someone who plans on doing battle in close quarters. We were seeing all of that and it was becoming frantic in the runup to the election. After that, the organization of the leader of the crowd was speaking to the leader of the oath keepers, that was happening a lot. They were saying it, i met with x and i met with y. By the december protests in washington, d. C. Where they were willing to do arms protest armed combat with anitfa. They are like isis. I am not joking. Their core philosophy is if you are not one of us, we can kill you. You have to join us to survive. These guys were coordinated and i hope the whole and i have a whole chapter of it where they are just talking about it this week. This book was done last august. You are reading a product that was a year ahead of these briefings. Another thing i do is i go out even further as to what is going to happen after this. Talking about them organizing is natural. In many instances i had to go back and say there is a gap of information here. That is how the Analyst Community doesnt, there are two conversations i am missing here. They would have to say whatever is impacting the next conversation. We could recreate their meetings and another january 6 has their records and they have all of those meetings and they were an army organizing. Anybody that reads this book will be blown away by how much and it has been confirmed by the committee. He said he wrote over a year ago. The proud boys and oath keepers marching through the capital in that first hearing before the rally, that is in the book. This book contract was signed december 14, 2020. That is how hard how far ahead i wrote this book. This stuff was a tsunami. It is like looking out on a beach and all of the waves are gone, it is just books sitting on santa. What you are looking at is the after tsunami. I hope everybody is doing all right. Take deep breaths. What do we do about it what do we do about it . What are the shortterm and longterm steps to protect this democracy from insurgency . I said to my friend that i hate