 July the 13th, 2022, give me only one thing. It's time for American Issues Take One. I'm Tim Apachele, your host. And today's title is Connect the Dots, Hate Groups in the Trump White House. Yesterday we had our, I think seventh installment of the January 6th House Select Committee hearings. And not to be disappointed, but there was new information that we just didn't really quite know or understand. And what the major points of the hearing were, the takeouts that I came up with was the big insane crazy meeting on December the 18th, which took place with a cast of characters known as Team Crazy. The cast of characters included Rudy Giuliani, General Michael Flynn, Attorney Sidney Powell for Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows and the overstocked CEO, Patrick Byrne. And for Team Normal, we had Pat Cipolloni, White House attorney and Eric Herschelman, another attorney for the White House. So that's the cast, and we're gonna discuss exactly what that meeting was all about and a lot more. So before I go on, I'd like to introduce my special guest and co-host, Jay Fidel and always special guest Cynthia Lee Sinclair. Good morning. Morning, Tim. Whoa, it was fun listening to the hearings and the recap of the hearings. Boy, oh boy, did we learn things that we never knew before and not to be disappointed. So Jay, here we have the big takeouts from that January 18th meeting that kind of was unannounced and Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn just kind of waltzed into the Oval Office, must be nice to just waltz into the Oval Office and see the president of the United States without an appointment, but that's what they did. And what we came out with it is that they advised Donald Trump to seize all the election machines in various states to get the United States military to go pick them up and seize them. And in addition to that, we had a request from Sidney Powell to appoint her as special counsel to basically jail anybody who got in the way of the confiscation of election machines. Isn't that special? What was your takeout of the hearings yesterday? What stood out for you? Well, first, I think the meeting you're talking about was December 18th, running overnight till nearly two o'clock in the morning on December 19th. That is after the election and before the insurrection, right in that period, part of the galvanization of Trump's insurrection crowd. So my take on the hearing, I mean, you said it was a big surprise, it wasn't a big surprise to me. I've been thinking about what happened, him watching television and doing nothing despite the protestations of the people around him on January's day, we kind of knew his attitude. We know what a wild man he is, not to use the word wild too much. And you could have imagined this kind of thing happening. It's the inmates running the asylum. And you know, what it suggests to me, Tim and Cynthia, is that this is not a phenomenon limited to the insurrection. This is the way the White House worked. He brought people or allowed people in to see him and the crazier they were, the more inviting he was. And by letting him come into the Oval Office, he was essentially saying, I accept you, I believe in you, I agree with you, I wanna hear from you, I want you to advise me. But I think his whole administration was like that. You know, we have thought for the last couple of hundred years with the people who visited the Oval Office were rational, but not in the Trump administration. This was an example of gross irrationality, the inmates running the asylum and so it's, to me it's not really that much of a surprise what happened. But that's a good point. Is it true he selects people that think like himself and just wants, yes, yes, man, lackeys, that's who he really wants to surround him to totally agree with whatever he says and thinks? Well, I think yes, but there's a dynamic here. There's a trend that he wanted crazier people all the time. And he got crazier people all the time who was getting worse and worse. And this was, you know, the apex of all of that. It was really bad because his own appointees, his own lawyer appointees, what was it, Hirschman and Cipolloni, they were on the conservative, I should say the reasonable side of things. They know it. Team normal. You know, act normal, don't do this. And Trump really wasn't listening to them very much and spent until two in the morning listening to, you know, the inmates. So I think this was an example of when the two sides parted ways right there in front of them. You could imagine that meeting. And I would say this too, you know, what we heard in the hearings about the proud boys and all that, the oath keepers, this is downplayed. You know, they're not telling us the real storm in the drama of what happened. But the same thing with that meeting on December 18th, they're not telling us how really crazy it was. Remember Cassidy who said there was ketchup on the wall, you know, they were throwing things at each other. Trump was having a mental breakdown in front of all of them, you know, and Sidney Powell was I think largely responsible for his decompensation. So yes, we got a pretty interesting story. No, I don't think it was a big surprise, especially after Cassidy, but you know, in view of all we've seen all the dots we've connected over the past five years on this very show, Tim. But you know, I think also it's understated and it demonstrates his state of mind that nobody was gonna convince him otherwise. All right, that's the critical phrase right there, Ajay. I think you just hit it and that is the state of mind because up to now, they've been saying, well, you know, Donald Trump wasn't really all that involved and it was all his henchmen that were, you know, scheming, plotting, and planning, be it at the hotel or wherever. And Donald Trump was just kind of an ancillary player in all this, not really up to snuff to what was going on. But I think Liz Cheney has said it correctly and that is what is his state of mind? You know, just to go back a little bit. You get the first when Bill Barr says to Trump, there is no evidence of a fraud election. That's when Trump went unhinged through the plate. Tomatoes, ketchup, whatever it is against the wall, just went unhinged against Bill Barr. So there's a point of state of mind. He's being told over and over and over by attorneys left and right that there is no fraud in this, Mr. President. And then of course you have acting deputy attorney general for the Department of Justice, Donahue, who also says these results aren't correct. They're wildly incorrect. There is no fraud in these elections. And that's when he just said, remember to the DOJ, hey, don't just say, just go along with it. Just say this, we'll handle the rest. And the Republicans will handle the rest. This state, there's issues enough for the states to be alarmed about a potential fraud in the election. And that was his influence on the DOJ. And then last but not least, you know, again, we have all the things that Cipollone has been telling Trump all along in these meetings that no, there's no fraud. So before he does the magical tweet on December, it was the 19th, it was the morning after the meeting. Yeah, and it was that all tell out 142, yeah, 142 AM tweet saying, you know, statistically it's impossible for me to lose this election, come to Washington DC on January the 6th, be there it will be wild. So as a result, that says his state of mind was convinced that no matter what he's told, he's gonna try to disrupt the election process. And certainly it might pence his role in that process. To your point, to your point of state of mind, did Donald Trump have state of mind in your opinion? Well, and to advance. The people around him had suggested, you know, we can remember a number of them had suggested the 25th Amendment. That was not a lighthearted touch. They really felt he'd lost it. And indeed, if you remember Kellyanne Conway in the campaign of 2016, you know, with alternative facts and then Trump rolling out 30,000 lies. I mean, how can you tell what he's lying? His lips are moving. That sort of thing, you know, this is really pathological. And so what we have here is a president who increasingly lied. Worse yet, he lied to himself. This is a president who was unhinged many times and who had his own reality. He lived in a world of pathological, if not insanity. And so, you know, what I'm saying is this is the natural progression of 30,000 lies. He's lying to himself. He's lying to the people. He's lying to the people around him and his staff and in the Oval Office. So I think that's what comes out. And when she raises, when Liz Cheney raises, this notion of state of mind. And when we talk about it here on Think Tech, we're talking about a guy who was nuts and, you know, that's the long and short of it. Now, the question, ultimately, I know you're gonna get to this. The question is, what do the people out there believe? Because they are hearing at least some of it. And the hearing witness after witness talk about his, you know, being unhinged and unable to wrap his mind around the reality, the truth. And it sort of reinforces the rumors and the reports that they have denied over the past four years that he's a liar. They have gone along with him. But this may cause at least some of the people in his base that say, wait a minute, he was really disconnected with the reality. And this is an example. Nobody gets involved in a ridiculous meeting like this. Good points, all great points, Jay. Cynthia, I am gonna ask that question. What effect is this having on Americans? I know that Liz Cheney has done an excellent job of trying to leave breadcrumbs for the Department of Justice to say, hey, look at this or look at that. That may not be the role of the hearing committee, but she's doing an excellent job. But some of her points, particularly regarding Trump's state of mind, may not be fully paid attention to by the Department of Justice, but she is, I think, winning points to the American public, particularly those who don't want to really entertain that Donald Trump had any involvement in this. To Jay's question, which I'd like to ask you is, is she making points with that population of audience? Well, I don't know as I think he was crazy. More like crazy like the fox. He's, you know, we talk about him being really dumb and he is in so many normal ways, but he's brilliant con man. And so all of this, you know, crazy-making behavior, well, it's easy to say, well, he was crazy. He wasn't crazy. He knew exactly what he was doing. And I think he did it on purpose and he planned it out. And all the people that we like to call King Crazy, yes, to a normal person, they're crazy. The kind of stuff they were coming up with was not so, but not really if you look at it from the point of view of did they want to get their own outcome and did they wanna manipulate what that outcome would be? And so that to us, that looks crazy. To them, it's just corrupt and evil because it is. It's darkness, it's lies, it's untruth. And so I don't know as I like to have that label on him as being crazy because then we can dismiss everything as crazy. And I don't think we should- Yeah, I mean, even crazy people do serve time. And they do convict it. So at the beginning of the hearing, Liz Cheney kind of had a nice introduction to say that, and I'll paraphrase some of this, is that, you know, Donald Trump really is in the center of this attack. He wasn't just an ancillary off the side kind of role play here. He was in the center of it and she said, here's a 76 year old man, not an impressionable child who has access to the most detail of this whole process, detail about the election results, detail about how things came about in each and every state. And over and over again, he was told by his attorneys and those that were not teen crazy that you have lost. The president of the United States is going to Joe Biden. And he had that knowledge over and over again. And the question is, as she put very properly is, how can you willfully ignore or say, willfully be ignorant of these things and that doesn't work? Did you do a good job in that yesterday and previous hearings, have they done a fairly sufficient job to put Donald Trump in the center of all this pre-planning of the insurrection of the Capitol? I really think that they've done a great job of that. And it seems like they center all of the stuff that they bring forward around Trump. And I love that they're using Republicans, staunch Republicans that are the ones that are coming forward saying, I love my Republican party, but I'm not going to break the law for them. There was a really great interview. I mean, an article in the Washington Post today that's the ex-cultist delivered the most effective message for Republicans. And it was as if they were saying, hey, it's okay to make a mistake. You can change your mind. You can wake up and realize that you were following a lie and you can turn from it. And I thought that was really important. And I think one of the things that struck me the most, emotionally out of all of it was the way that, I can't remember which, it was the short-haired guy, not the guy with all the tattoos and the team jacket. Can't remember either one of their names, I'm sorry. But the guy with the shorter red hair, he profoundly and genuinely apologized to every single policeman as he walked, every single Capitol policeman as he walked by at the end of the hearing. And that was important to me to see how really remorseful this guy was, as he's realizing what a terrible thing he did to them. And I thought that was powerful. And I don't know if anybody else saw it. Yes, that was in the newspaper. But the question is whether he's been sentenced yet and whether he was trying to garner favor with the sentencing authority. I didn't think about that. Well, if that's true, he did pretty well. He might get some favor treatment. What you saw is an act of reconciliation or attempt to reconcile his grievous sins. And man, I thought it was very poignant too, but that doesn't mean he's not gonna serve time. But you're right, Jay, maybe he'll serve less time. Good point. Right. Well, I go back to the question you posed for Cynthia for a moment then. And that is, this is pretty good. The people on that committee are pretty good. Liz Cheney is good. The chair is good. Members are good. They're asking the right questions. Their staffers have done a lot of research, probably more research than the FBI has done. I mean, on the top players, right? On the ones who came together in the conferencing that created the insurrection. We don't care about the people who were out there doing silly things. We care about the ones who set it up. And clearly, didn't we know this, that Trump was at the center of it? This was an expression of his desire, his misguided desire, his unconstitutional desire to stay in power, no matter what the vote was. And he kept, remember the evidence, he kept looking for ways to do it. You know, this way they said no. That way they said no. This way they said no. Then a creative bugger is what he was. And finally, with the absence of any other reasonable alternative, let's have an insurrection. Let's take over. Let's march into the Capitol. You know, it's not that they wanted to overturn the election. I want to be clear about this. He wanted to overturn the whole government. He wanted to overturn the United States of America. It doesn't get any worse than that. If there had been someone else trying this and not him, that guy would be in jail now. I don't understand why we can't do that for Trump. So anyway, you know, the problem is that we don't see anything happening at the Department of Justice, really. Also, they raided that guy's house. Well, what about the house parade on Jeffrey Clark, DOJ? Yeah, it's okay. That's nice. But I'd like to see some real parallel going on here. I'd like to be convinced that Merrick Garland is not AWOL and so far, I'm sorry, I'm not convinced. And the problem that I have is that we have a deadline. We have the November election coming soon. And in fact, voting is gonna start within 60 days. So is he moving fast enough to even say what he's doing, even if he doesn't do it? He could say, take a position. He could say what's gonna happen down the line. He's not even saying that. And then furthermore, you have the people around the country. And you know, if you see those charts about what states have screwed up the voting laws, they're the same states that have, you know, screwed up Roe v. Wade, by the way, same state. You know, there are dozens of states and there are dozens of outrageous laws. And the Supreme Court is in its present and atopated condition, it's not gonna set those laws aside. So we are going to have a judgment day like it or not. And it's gonna be amazing surprise to everybody. It shouldn't be. It's not gonna be a surprise to us here in November when the Republicans take both houses and do what they bloody well please. And you know, so I don't think that Merrick understands the exigencies and the need for swift action. And although I think, these people disagree with me, although I think this committee is doing a really terrific job for what they can do, they're limited, you know, what they can do. And sadly, they're having trouble getting action on the subpoenas out of Merrick also. They may not be reaching enough of the base to make a difference. Maybe not be reaching enough of the electorate to make a difference in November. Sorry, that's all a waste, isn't it? Well, let me address that. I think, you know, early I said, you know, the committee has left breadcrumbs for the DOJ. Let's just discuss a few of those breadcrumbs. But number one, they're throwing a clear delineation of the fake elector scheme. That was done masterfully to the House committee hearing. They've done a great job now just recently about the discussion for Donald Trump to try and attempt to pick up voting machines and use the military to do so. That's great testimony. Again, they did a great job of documenting how Donald Trump called the Secretary of State in Georgia, Ross and Oates, the call to DOJ. Again, look past things and just put out a statement so that the legislators in all these other states will think that there is some fraudulent activity. And then the attempt to install Jeffrey Clark as the new AG. And then last not least, but we also had other calls to other Secretary of States and Michigan comes to mind. So I think the hearing committee has done a great job of leaving the breadcrumbs for the DOJ to pick up on. I just don't think it's in their wheelhouse to announce what they're interested in yet. What do you think, Jay? They have great challenges, great challenges because Trump himself personally after being warned by Liz Cheney, not to tamper with witnesses, he's calling witnesses. What a guy and where is Merrick on that one? I mean, that's real time. That's now. It's not even an historic examination of what happened. He's doing it now despite warnings that it is illegal in felonious as a matter of fact. The problem is that you ask me as a Republican, ask me as a coup d'etat what I think about this and I'll tell you, it's a witch hunt. That committee is not doing a good job. That committee is misstating the evidence and they're causing these witnesses to misstate the evidence and this is all anti-Trump and Trump is still my hero. That's what they're gonna say, a lot of them. They're cultists and this committee may not mean anything to them. You and I and Cynthia and the people we know and deal with all day, the people we speak to, at least some of them are totally convinced of what you said and they're locked onto that but not everybody. And remember that truth in this country does not mean what it used to mean. Good point. Cynthia, after the infamous December 19th, 1.42 a.m. tweet about coming down to the White House, it'll be wild, that infamous tweet. What the hearing seemed to put together quite well is that there is a kind of a joining of forces between QAnon, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers while once being separate organizations and probably mistrustful of one another, they decided immediately after that tweet to basically start forming an alliance. And with that alliance, they did gang up and join up for January 6th. Is that an important factor? Is that just an ancillary issue? As DOJ looks at this. We saw all the connections in their emails and their social media posts for quite a while now. So I think that was really well established all the way through with that sort of line that's been going. We have to remember that December 19th tweet and meeting and all that stuff happened after 60 court cases were lost. And that was something that struck me. Good point. When Cipollone said that during the hearing and he said, well, I kept trying to tell him, show me your evidence. Where's your evidence? Well, we don't have any. And the way they skirted around trying to answer and not just say we don't have evidence or we're working on evidence, or it was like, oh, how can you ask that? And their responses were those kind of dismissive things that showed that they knew what they were doing. They knew 100% what they were doing. And so did Trump. And I think that's so important. Well, let me go to that point. That's exactly what they asked the Secretary of State of Arizona, Rusty, and I forget his last name. Ours. They said, he said, well, that's a major thing you want me to do, show me the evidence. And Giuliani and Trump were on that call, that phone call, they were directly involved with that. And they said, oh, we have plenty of it and we'll get to it. We'll show it to you. And of course- The theories, that's what they said. We have theories. We just don't, we have lots of theories. We just don't have any evidence yet. And I said, well, I can't do what you're asking me to do based on lack of evidence. And so here we are. Donald Trump again in the center of those conversations with various secretaries of state trying to come up with the either more votes or put everything on hold to try to flummox the whole transference of the president to Joe Biden. Can we go back to where you started on this? That is this Chinese presentation that when you say it'll be a wild time, it was a call to the Proud Boys. It was a dog whistle to them. And I use that term because that's a term that came up in the course of the Trump administration. Many times where he was speaking to and galvanizing his base and the Proud Boys and the Oathkeepers and these guys with guns, he was speaking to them. He stand by, remember that one, stand by? One by, one by. He has a line. Now the question, you know, we have the three of us, we have examined the social, the psychology and the social phenomenon involved in Trump, how he can reach people and turn them in his direction. How he can call upon their fear. He can make them into a tight community, which he has done, he has created the base. He has galvanized the base over five years and he still is. And the question is whether people, including professionals and psychologists and sociologists, see it the same way that Liz Cheney does. She says this was a dog whistle. She says this was communication to those guys. And they say it is, you know, are the professionals convinced, is the base convinced, would a jury or a Republican judge be convinced that Trump was actually talking to them? It's still kind of a special question and it's a kind of an amorphous answer. Well, he just said, it'll be a wild time, that's what he said. He didn't say, you know, I want you to bring weapons. He didn't say that in so many words. And of course you have Michael Cohn saying you have to watch the words he uses. It's in, you know, the suggestibility of his rhetoric. As Cohn said, rhetoric, it really counts. Rhetoric and dog whistle. Well, as is the witness intimidation issue. Thank you, yes. The way they talk to these witnesses is that Donald Trump's watching, he's reading the transcripts. He still favors you. I mean, these kinds of suggestions, yes. He knows you'll do the right thing. It's mafia. It's out of God, father and mother. Yeah, so. Yeah, anyway, I wanna make the point because I think it's not entirely clear that the whole country is gonna buy into this thing about the dog whistle. Right. I think we have to not forget about the dog whistle since he came down the escalator. And not so much a dog whistle, sometimes a bullhorn be it immigration issues or racism or in between. So, all righty, we've run out of time. So Cynthia, what was your takeaway from the hearing here on Tuesday? Well, I think we need to not forget about, oh, Mike Flynn calling for martial law every five minutes, calling for martial law even in that meeting as we've never had proof or I guess, corroboration that he said those things. But now we do after this hearing because Cipollone told us that he was saying it in the meeting and so was, and so was, what's her name? That crazy lawyer lady. Sorry, I was having a mental block. Sydney Powell. Thank you. Yeah, Sydney Powell. So they were calling for, that night they were calling for martial law. After they knew they'd already exhausted all the courts, the possible courts, right? So now what's next? That meeting was sort of a tipping point of what are we gonna do next? And they were just sort of fomenting all these crazy ideas of martial law, get all the voting machines, you know, all these different things that they're going to try to do. Let's not forget that when Senator Murphy, no, Congresswoman Murphy, excuse me, was giving her closing and when she was talking about it, she listed every single one of the other people that were there and involved in all of this. Jim Jordan, Mo Brooks, I didn't write down all the names. There was like six of them. And so I think that's what I want people to go out and look at. Because here we've been focused, focused, focused on pinning this on Trump. Without really even mentioning any of these, you know, totally crooked, corrupt, congressmen that were involved. Beau Burt was one of them. Matt Gaetz was one of them. And even Marjorie Taylor Greene was one of them. All of these people that were involved in a meeting together about this very thing and how, so they knew about January 6th too. It wasn't a surprise to them when it happened. They had already been involved in some of the meetings beforehand. So I wanna see us start to really hold these congressmen and women also guilty, right? And also corrupt and complicit in all this. And not just quietly, oh, they didn't do anything. So they were complicit. No, they were involved. And I think we need to have way more hearings so that we can flush out all of that stuff. Cause I don't believe we can trust Merrick Garland to really do it. He is so tied to his federalist roots. And we have to always remember that's where Merrick Garland comes from. That ultra conservative believes that the president should have all power, things like that's where his mentality is. And he would have made a great Supreme Court judge. But I think that- No, no, no, no, sorry. Terrible. You don't think- Well, we won't have time to debate that point. Well, I think he might have made, cause he's very into the law and all that, but- Yeah, I understand, but he's- But he's a terrible, terrible attorney general. So that's what I thought. All right, Cynthia, thanks for your points. And I think, unfortunately, there are points well made about the Congress, men that might been involved, but there's only one hearing left, probably maybe two, but they're not going to get to it, unfortunately. So your whiffs may go unanswered, but we'll see. Jay, your last takeaway of the hearing before we end today. Well, you know, they have done a good job. And nobody I know will dispute that. But as I mentioned before, you know, the question is whether it reaches the base, the public, the country at large. That's a big question, and I'm pessimistic about it. However, and this is something I would like to talk about on American issues take to tomorrow, is the media. How well is the media done in covering these hearings? And how well can the media do now in making the points that you guys, that all of us have been making about the efficacy of these proceedings and what we have learned in these proceedings, what we have found about these characters, the inmates who are running the asylum here. And I think we have really got to have that permeate the entire country between now and even September, every day counts. So we should talk about this tomorrow in terms of the role of the media in making it clear what has happened. Alrighty, Jay, look forward to that conversation. Thank you very much. We've run out of time. I'm Tim Appachell, your host, and I sincerely like to thank Jay Fidel and Cynthia Lee Sinclair. Thank you one and all. Thank you for your great comment. And we'll see you next week. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.