 It's true. Aloha. It's June the third. It's Wednesday. It's 11 o'clock. It's Trump week. I'm Tim Apachele, your host. And the title of this show today is, When the Looting Starts, The Shooting Starts. To a certain degree, that was true. We had on June the, just recently on Monday, June the first, we didn't have looting take place, but we saw, we certainly saw shooting take place. And the shooting was in the form of tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper bullets. And this was all planned to strategy. And I'm gonna go and talk about a little bit about that. And it all started with a quote from Donald Trump when he was in the Rose Garden. Just before he went and took a walk over to St. John's Episcopal Church. And Donald Trump said the following, I will fight to keep them safe, meaning the protesters. I will fight to protect you. I am your president of law and order and an ally of all peaceful protests. Now, simultaneously at that time, or prior to that speech, William Barr, Attorney General took a little walk over to the park. And he did a quick survey of the park and then walked back. And while Trump was speaking those words, the Mounted Police, the National Guard, the Park Police in Lafayette Park were shooting off canisters of tear gas and firing rubber bullets to disperse a completely 100% peaceful crowd. Not 99%, not 99.5%, a 100% peaceful crowd. That crowd was cleared immediately, quickly, for the one purpose and one purpose only, was for a photo opportunity for Donald Trump to walk across Lafayette Park and go in front of the church and pose and have a photo op holding a Bible. This has spurred a lot of comments, a lot of criticism. And the bottom line is this was a bad optics for Donald Trump, but Donald Trump thinks it's not a bad optics. So I want to welcome everyone to the show. Winston, welcome. Cynthia Sinclair, welcome. Stephanie Dalton, welcome. Thank you for coming on Trump Week This Week. Cynthia, let's go to you and I want your comments. I want your perception of this whole debacle is all about and give me your thoughts, please. I think the irony of the fact that while he was saying I will protect you, he was attacking them. So that's just really a huge thing of a, I think that's just such an important factor to look at. Now, granted, he says he didn't order them to be dispersed. It was Attorney General Barr that did it. Well, apparently Attorney General Barr had ordered it to be cleared earlier. And then when he arrived and saw that it wasn't, so he reordered it. Now, maybe the original order didn't include bullets and rubber bullets and tear gas, but the second one must have, because that is exactly what they used. Now, I watched Stephanie, whatever the gal's name is, the new spokesperson for the new press secretary I can't remember her name. Kayleigh, Kayleigh. Kayleigh, that's it. Thank you. I watched Kayleigh this morning stand there and say to all the reporters in her little press conference that the people were throwing bricks, they were throwing rocks, they were throwing frozen water bottles. Well, there is a company that was from Australia, a press company that was there from Australia and they filmed the entire thing. So they were filming at the time that this happened. So I mean- So with CNN, I was watching CNN live when it was occurring and I guarantee you he had to put on his gas mask. They were people getting their eyes washed out with milk and water. I saw evidence of people being shot right on the spot and they were showing their wounds. The marks of look to be a round, a big round diameter object that hit them. So Cynthia, this is the old thing that on inaugural day in 2016 where Kellyanne Conway said, these are alternative facts. This is nothing more than an alternative fact. Who are you gonna believe? Your own eyes or the administration? And I've never seen a more blatant case of gas lighting. Once again, gas lighting take place in front of all of the nation, the world in fact, that this thing was provoked by violence, by the protesters and they simply responded. Go ahead, continue. The things that has struck me in all of this is the fact that on my Twitter and on my Facebook page, I have tons of people coming on to say, oh, well, they didn't use tear gas. They didn't shoot bullets. And I think you're just going to take the word of an administration that has lied what 8,000 some odd times since taking office against what you saw with your own eyes. And that's the part that just is so crazy. Like you say, that gas lighting is... I'm sorry to correct you, Cynthia, but I believe that's 18,000 lies. Thank you. I knew it was something ridiculously... With an eight. 18,000, which is even bigger and more. Regardless of the number too, thank you for the correction, but regardless of the number, we have been gaslit so much from this president and from this administration that people are starting to believe it. They don't believe their own eyes. They fall for what the... Well, here's the question. Did Fox News replay any of the footage from CNN or from the Australian news crew? Did they even publicize that on their station? I'm gonna guess they didn't. Now, I can't confirm that or not, but I'm gonna guess they did not play any of that footage prior to when the Mounted Police started coming in and pushing everyone back. You know, one of the things that I thought was pretty remarkable because I go and flip to Fox News and I try to watch all of them, right? Fox News shows nothing but looters every time I've been on it. Nothing but looters. They don't even show any of the peaceful president protests. They don't show any of that. All they show is the looting and the fires and the damage. And they never once mentioned the word white supremacists. It's all antifa. It's all, you know, bad actors, but none of them are white supremacists. Okay, good point, Cynthia. I'm gonna jump over here to Winston. Winston, what were your observations and what are your comments and criticisms? Well, it's just a sad day for America, for Americans, for humans, but it's also a hopeful day that people are, I want to say that they're waking up and this is morphed. This was a week ago, a start of demonstrations about racial justice and a murder that we saw on TV at the hand of police officers. And unfortunately, you know, the police are there to serve and protect and the huge majority do exactly that. They were probably more disgusted and horrified than anybody else for people that honor their professions. Now- Let me jump in here for the really quick question. Did Donald Trump add the gasoline early on when he said that these were thugs, that domination is required, total domination. And when the looting starts, the shooting starts, did that at all add any more gasoline onto the flames or was those comments largely ignored? Every thing he has done since he's been in office and before he's been in office has added fuel to this fire. This is just now it's hotter. But what we're seeing now is that you're having people protesting. They're angry about so many things. They're angry and you're feeling this and the racial part. People have woken up about this now. I think in a way that we didn't before, before Ferguson or all the many other injustices, that is important. But now we're looking at the basic fabric of America where you're having, I mean that picture of military on the Lincoln Memorial of Lafayette Park where we're seeing the basic right of Americans to assemble peaceably in protest for whatever reason is now being threatened by complete militarization and takeover of our country. So now what you're having, you're having the governor say, we don't want federal troops here. We can manage this crisis. Our cities might be burning, we might be having riots, we might be having something, but we have this under control. And if we need help, we'll ask you. Thanks very much. So let's talk about the last point you just made and that's the insurrection act of 1807. He's basically saying that if the governors can't stop the looting and quell the violence, that he'll do it. Donald Trump in the past has made many, many threats, not knowing the constitution, not knowing the first thing about the rule of law. Was this this bluster or is he actually going to fulfill that promise? Now, I know we had 1600 troops come into Washington, D.C., but does that carry forward in other states? That's what we're gonna see this next week, but hopefully you have people in the military saying, we are not your tool for re-election or suppressing Americans in these things. No one advocates for violence in these situations. No one is saying that the looting is correct. The most powerful demonstrations are the peaceful ones. The ones that I've been most touched by are when the police and protesters have come together, even marched together and said, we are with you on this, very powerful things that we're not seeing a lot of or enough of, but that's actually what's happening here. There's a few bad apples. There's instigators who they are and what their motives are. They just want to cause mayhem for whatever reasons and we won't know the truth about that ever again. Let me address what I think was the hypocrisy of going in front of St. John's Episcopal Church and awkwardly holding up the Holy Bible. It looks like he's never held one before and the objects of that have been well criticized in several news stations in the newspaper. When you saw that, what was your initial reaction to it? I thought that is the quintessential photo that will define the presidency of Donald Trump, that he beat his way out of the White House to stand in front of a church that is boarded up past graffiti that said, no peace, no justice, something like that to show what? He was holding the Bible upside down and backwards, did not go there to offer a prayer, a moment of reconciliation, to read a verse, anything like that. This was just pure weird optics that hopefully anybody can see through. Now, when you read the other side, they get, oh good, he's taking back the country from these looters and I don't know, re-Christianizing us. I'm not really sure what the message there was, but as far as what really happened, for those of us that can read and see with our own eyes, it's a startling image. It was a startling episode that is the defining. Doesn't it mean anything that Pat Robertson of the 700 Club, an evangelical, if you will, came out and said, this was not good, this was not a good image? When I saw that, it's like, A2, Pat, A2, you know, when you've lost Pat Robertson, that says a lot, but I'm not worried about the Pat Robertsos, I'm worried about the 45% of Americans that still support Donald Trump and think that he is the best thing since sliced bread. Now, those polls have changed. I just saw a Reuters poll, Reuters that 33% prove on the way Donald Trump has handled this and 73% said he has not handled this George Floyd situation at all, not well. Let's see what, you know what, the polls, that's, and I hope that's true. Let's see how that translates if we're allowed to vote and if we can vote in November. Every time I think about this entire presidency, I think this man is absolutely trying to get himself run out of office by one egregious and outrageous thing after another, but in fact, It doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. It not happen and people see that and they think that is wonderful, but hopefully this one, Americans will say, you know what, no, we need to have the right to assemble peaceably and air our grievances and whether that's from the White House or- That's in the First Amendment for sure. Stephanie, thank you Winston. Stephanie, your thoughts, your comments, your observations and let it fly. I think that Winston picks overlaps with what I've been thinking about this at the notion of fantasy presumably of things changing in the White House, but I see this duration of the demonstration as very interesting. I think people are truly focused on the real issue, which is justice for this man's unlawful death, but it's slowly inching up, not slowly, every now and then you'll hear it moving up to there's a bigger thing here, okay? This is centuries of this kind of mistreatment and then you'll see it go higher to the vacuum of the leadership, no policy, no indication that there's gonna be anything happening now that we understand institutional discrimination racism and now we want something to happen. Again, back to the vacuum and the leadership. Well, let me address that right there. You say centuries of this sort of injustice and I call it just an electronic version of a lynching that took place in front of our eyes with George Floyd. We also had Eric Gardner from Staten Island that remember he was trying to sell cigarettes, one at a time and he also couldn't breathe and he died of asphyxiation. Then we have Breanna Taylor from Louisville who in her own home as a, she's an RN nurse in her own home, the home was broken into by police and she was shot dead. So George Floyd is just one, I think it's the straw that broke the camel's back. It was too much. And it doesn't matter what they did. I mean, they overworked them in Jamestown, Virginia in 1610 or whatever. But then they killed them indiscriminately and then all the way through the hanging, the whole thing. I mean, so this is just another round all under and now we do electronic lynching. You brought that up, which is interesting. So the real modern version of it. But yeah, and I think that it's bigger than that because the people are seeing this is a bigger thing than just this murder, okay? So we're out here also because of the overarching concerns that we have and we want address. And I feel that they're shifting over to wanting something to happen about the institutional aspect nature of the racism and that that takes policy and that takes law. Okay, well, let's talk about policy because how has Donald Trump already set the stage to now define himself as the law and order president just like Nixon did. By the way, law and order president is just code word for saying anyone that acts out, white America is gonna put them back down. So that's law and order president. And to what degree is he now going to use this as his to scare white America to agree with them? Well, I think one nice sign is that representative King of the house has been knocked out of the primary and he's white supremacy and he's anti-immigration. It's the all of these things that's true. That just recently happened, that's correct. But I think what the community is doing in this demonstration and their leaders and the church people that are speaking, they're moving it up to these bigger points. And because the administration is doing nothing, no policy, et cetera, no trying to make people feel better or be empathetic, but what they're doing is accelerating, accelerating the demonstration actually for their own purposes to show how vicious and destructive these people are. But that's slapping back on them. Okay, so that with this acceleration of it, my fantasy is that it will finally come, finally the fingers are gonna point to him. And that maybe there is gonna be as with- Did that happen between now and election? Election day? What happened tomorrow or this afternoon? It happened any time. And in that circumstance, we might get a break. Nothing breaks up the Republican wall. This king loss is important in that that's broken up. That's a crack. But so we might be seeing some things, hopefully that will. Alrighty, I wanna switch gears here a little bit. Cynthia, to what degree does Donald Trump find success of bringing in the army or military forces in order to be used against the citizens of the United States? How successful will he be there and will it happen? And if it does happen, what will be the Rama vacations against Donald Trump or for Donald Trump? That's a big giant bunch of questions there. And each one is pretty huge. So it's hard to define. No, I don't think it would work. Yes, I think he will try. He is already setting the stage by dividing the people, right? So he's already vilified the press so we don't believe what we're being told from the press. And so many people are just being gaslit by all of the stuff that he's been putting up. Now we need to remember that he's made it clear and his administration has made it clear that the only people that are out there are Democrats. Republicans are staying home. That's a big line that he's drawn in the sand with everything that he's been putting out there. He also at the same time retweeted something that said the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat. Now that right there is instigating people to go out and attack the protesters. So now the police are justified in what they've done. So if they're justified in doing that, then how much more will they be justified in doing? How much more can they expand that out to the rest of the country? So it's no longer just in the park in front of the White House but it's all the streets, everywhere, anywhere. Before we know it, we blink and we've got martial law. And that's where I think he's headed and that's what worries me. All right, I know you've had that concern for some time. Winston, to what degree was this officer that murdered George Floyd? To what degree do you think he's been emboldened by Donald Trump and the fact that he was being filmed by multiple people on the sidewalk with their camera phones and didn't seem to care a whit about it? Is that just, is that being emboldened by an administration or an attitude within the police force that has been emboldened by this administration? I mean, I was shocked on the fact that he looked right at the, well, filming him and he didn't have a chair in the world. And nor did he lift up on his knee on Mr. Floyd's throat. It's just sad that any human would do that to another human and just not care for whatever reasons, whether he thinks he'll be pardoned or that it's part of his job or hopefully he's just insane. But whatever it is, there's a man that's dead that our nation's on fire right now because they're justifiably so because of that action because that was filmed, that's what it was but it probably happened 50 times in the previous week it just wasn't filmed and not filmed as egregiously. But now we're moving to the meta level here. We're not gonna erase 400 years of incredible racial injustice in this country. We're just going to become aware that our systems, our policies, we incarcerate enormous numbers of people in this country. Of course, it just proportionately communities of color. This is not, this is the start of awareness or it's a continuing of the start. It's been going on for a while but there's been a big shift, there's been a big movement so that people now can individually start looking at themselves, at their small groups, at their organizations, at their institutions that they're involved with and say, we need, what kind of America do we wanna live in? Do we wanna live in a racist, sexist, homophobic, poor, uneducated, violent America or do we wanna elevate all people to give them equality of opportunity towards a more perfect union? And that's the inflection point that we're at. I agree with what you just said but tell me what the 38% to 45% of Trump loyal followers, what are they saying right now? Well, hopefully they're saying the same thing and as Americans we should agree on those basic principles and hopefully we will step back and say, what is our nation about? What does it mean? And we are not what we were 300, 400 years ago. We're not what we were 200 years ago or 150 years ago. We are evolving, we are better, we are getting better and we have to use this as a growth point. And I saw where that quote Cynthia or that, where Donald Trump tweeted that only good Democrat is a dead Democrat retweeting that video, horrendous. And he also said it was gonna be a great night for the MAGA and you can't, for MAGA supporters to come out. And he was asking for people to come basically and involve themselves in this issue. People can see beyond this, I hope. They need to see beyond this. They need to say, what are our core values as American people? We can have differences of opinion and how we apply things or how we, the nuances, but basically what are our values as American citizens, as American people? What has sustained us and allowed us to thrive? And we need to look to that higher standard and hold ourselves accountable to it, hold our leaders accountable to it. And this is a chance that people can really step back and do that. And I'm hopeful, that poll that you just said, Reuters, that gives me a lot of hope so that we are reaching what that may support Donald in another way. We'll see if that follows through in other polls in the next week or two. Okay, Winston, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts. Stephanie, we only have a few minutes left, a couple of minutes left. Do you think this officer was emboldened by an attitude that was set up very early in the presidency? Remember the comment Donald Trump said in front of a group of police chiefs about, don't worry about hitting their heads on the car door or on the pillar of the roof when you put them in a car and if their heads get slammed into it, oh well, so be it. You don't have to be so nice when you put them in a car. Do you think that was part of the tone that's been adopted by some bad cops in some of these precincts and some of these police agencies? Well, I think, Tim, with your topic here and reminding us about that statement for Trump, that is the crux of the matter because it's the 39% that do believe that that is the way it should be. Any reflection, introspection that they do is about more Ruby Ridge, okay? And getting another gun, all right? Because they have a whole different schema of these, for these values. Is it hypocritical to watch people to bring their AK-47s, their AR-15s to the state capitol and protest and bring those in and yet not a word about the inappropriateness of that versus a lot of the peaceful protests have taken place in the last eight days. And yet it's been basically covered as a violent, a violent and leading up grievances because there was a damage to property and to policemen. Is there any hypocrisy in this? Though they're true to their values as is the policeman who had his knee on the neck and looking up at whoever was filming he didn't necessarily know that. He was enacting his belief system, okay? And he is gonna have that all the way through whatever harsh show trial we're gonna have to go through. But we are not, we are not respecting the strength of these ways of thinking. It's a different way of thinking. Now, how can it ever change? Yeah, I guess it can, there are things that we can do. But one of the things they've got right now with Donald Trump is power, okay? And that's why they're getting away with this stuff. They've never had power. They've been laughed at before they did. Now they do. Okay, well, Stephanie, thank you. We've run out of time. I wanna thank you, Stephanie, Cynthia, as always, Winston. Thank you very much. I wish I had time to say what goes on next week. We just don't have the time, but you can depend is gonna be a lot more chaos, a lot more disruption, and hopefully something good comes out of it. I'm hopeful that somehow in all of this chaos, be it the COVID-19 or the murder of George Floyd, that we get to a better place as a nation and as a people. And until then, my friends, aloha, and we'll see you next week, Wednesday, 11 o'clock. I'm Tim Apatel, your host. See you then.