Candace Owens on President Trump's outreach to Black voters, left's indoctrination of minorities
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This is a rush transcript from "Life, Liberty & Levin," September 13, 2020. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
MARK LEVIN, FOX NEWS HOST: Hello America, I'm Mark Levin. This is “Life, Liberty & Levin.”
You know, one of the areas where Donald Trump is making headway in this election is an area where the Democrats and the left never expected him to make headway and that is in the minority community, in the Hispanic community, in the black community, in the Asian community and so forth.
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Now they won't talk about it. Instead, they try and smear him as a racist and an anti-Semite and so forth. I think they do that because they fear the poll numbers which show him as I say, making strides in these various communities.
And one of them, I feel is in the African-American community. The President has reached out to this community during his term, his first term as President in a number of ways, whether it's Historically Black Colleges a permanent funding stream, whether it's enterprise zones, whether it's school choice, and we could go on and on and on.
And in four years, I would argue he has done more than Obama and Biden did in eight years and he did more than then Clinton and Gore did in eight years. The Democrats are good at talking about what they're going to do for various minority communities, and yet they never produce.
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I'm very excited to have as a guest tonight, Candace Owens, she has a fabulous new book out called "Blackout." Candace, am I right or wrong about this and the President's outreach to the black community?
CANDACE OWENS, AUTHOR, "BLACKOUT": You are correct, and I completely predicted about three years ago that we were going to see this in 2020 and what we're seeing now on the left is desperation because they're realizing that he's shaken their families. Their foundation being minority voters and the lies that they tell minority voters to strap them to the Democratic Party.
LEVIN: You've written a great book, Candace Owens, "Blackout." Here is the book. And the subtitle is, "How Black America Can Make its Second Escape from the Democratic Plantation." The Democratic Plantation.
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There's a show called "The View" that I never watch. It's a bizarre show. It's got these women on there, all of whom, but one are leftists. And the other day one of them said that black conservatives are basically props. Isn't this exactly what you're talking about? Doesn't this go to the core of your book in the way black Americans are treated by the left and the media in this country?
OWENS: Absolutely. And you know, it's a perfect way to talk about my subtitle, "How Black America Can make its Second Escape from a Democratic Plantations." And that was controversial when I decided to name that -- you know, name that subtitle and Simon & Schuster really pushed back on me and said, are you sure you mean this? And I was so happy to actually use this book to lay out my arguments about how Democrats have really just modern modernized and updated their techniques that they use on the plantation.
First and foremost, the breakdown of family. It's so strategic to them. They virtually celebrate the breakdown of a nuclear family. Movements like Black Lives Matter explicitly states on their website, that they are after the destruction of the nuclear family and that's there's something backwards about it, and that was actually crucial to maintaining slavery.
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Frederick Douglass -- and he writes in his autobiography about how he felt absolutely nothing when his mother died, when he was taken away from his sisters, because it was so integral to slavery to make sure that we didn't have that sense of familial instinct, so they can continually trade us on plantations.
What you're talking about in terms of the views and comments, we're talking about social lynchings that we're seeing play out today. You know, back in the days of slavery, black Americans were punished if they had the audacity to get up and leave and walk away from Democratic plantations, obviously severely brutalized and punished via lynchings.
And today we see social lynchings take place, like "The View" people saying, oh, well, you're a prop. You're a coon. You're an Uncle Tom. All of these various slurs that are used when a black American stands up and ordains, to think for themselves and say that they align themselves with conservative principles.
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So it was such an opportunity for me to lay out my arguments and to help black America to see that they've really just varied their techniques, and we're really living under the same conditions that we lived in, during the times of slavery. They've just been very good at hiding what they're doing today.
LEVIN: This notion of democratic socialism or Marxism, I wonder how many people on the hard left particularly Black Lives Matter know that Marxist - - Marx was a racist, and this whole Marxist ideology, when you look all over the world, look at what Communist China is doing to the Uyghurs and look what they've done to the Tibetans and Christians in that country.
I mean, you can see all over the world where you have Marxism because they have to wipe out religion, they have to wipe out differences between individuals and cultural groups of individuals, and yet you have groups like Black Lives Matter and Antifa, quite frankly the Democratic Party marching behind this banner, what do you make of that?
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OWENS: I actually spent time in this book talking about who Karl Marx was and what he believed in, and just like you said, against faith, against family, and definitely, very against religion and against -- would have been against black Americans, and yet, you see us taking in those principles.
And I wanted to really lay out when it started, when did black America start to adopt these Marxist principles, and it really started to happen in the mid-1960s when you had Dick Gregory saying, "Raise your consciousness to black America" and to see that there was corruption everywhere and that there was inequality everywhere, and that's what we're seeing today on the left, that they want us to look around and see pain and disruption and corruption everywhere.
And it's something that black Americans need to be educated about, and we are seeing that they are sort of replacing education with indoctrination, and if you are a black American and you go through the public school system like I went through, you come out, and you are basically a propagandist for the left and you don't realize it.
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I started on the left. Although, I was not politically active, I believed in all of the indoctrination, I believed, just four short years ago, that Republicans were racist, that conservatives were racist and that being a black person and being a woman disadvantaged me in life.
And I'm a pretty smart person. These were things that I learned actively. It wasn't because I wanted to be anti-American. It wasn't because I wanted to believe these things. It was because it was taught to me via the public school system, and we talk a lot about -- in my book, I talk a lot about education and how important it is that conservatives wake up to the fact that we've lost the education battle with the left and what that allows Democrats to do when they have a handle on the school system, when we start talking about this 1619 Project and what that really implies.
If we continue to allow the Democratic Party to control education, we are guaranteeing them the future because the youth is the future.
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LEVIN: Is this one of the reasons why the Democratic Party, the big unions, even the NAACP and others oppose school choice, particularly in minority communities that would give children and their parents an opportunity to send their kids to schools other than the government facility down the street.
OWENS: That is absolutely correct, and in talking about education, you can't help but look at the fact that it's actually failing kids today. I've spoken about various inner cities and the rates of illiteracy, which should astonish every single person in America.
The fact that in California, 75 percent of black boys cannot pass a basic literacy exam. That is astounding. You will never hear Black Lives Matter talk about that. You will never hear a Democratic candidate talk about that and yet, I'm talking about that.
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The fact that in Baltimore across five schools, they couldn't find a single child that was proficient in Reading and Writing and Math is astounding and people should be talking about that.
Again, going back to my thesis that what we're seeing is modernized techniques of the slavery plantation, what is the one thing black Americans were not allowed to do? Learn to read, learn to write. The punishment would have been severe for that.
And the reason for that is simple. It's because an educated mind cannot be enslaved. And what we're seeing today, when we're seeing this dumbing down of the education system where kids are learning feelings, and they're not learning facts, and they're not learning practical skills when they can tell you about their various oppressions, it is problematic and it's something that we need to have a meaningful discussion about.
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It needs to be more than a discussion. It needs to be action that is taken. And I do believe that this administration has taken those actions, which is why I'm proud to stand behind them.
LEVIN: The book is "Blackout" by Candace Owens. The subtitle is, "How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democratic Plantation."
Candace Owens, let me ask you this. We hear a lot from LeBron James and these very, very wealthy athletes and commissioners of the NFL and the NBA. And, again, very wealthy individuals in Hollywood, both white and black, who do not live in these communities they claim to be defending and the so- called revolution they claim to be promoting. What do you make of these folks?
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OWENS: You know, I'm always speaking out against these people, especially LeBron James. I mean, this is a man that lives in a $100 million mansion in Bel Air, and I always say, if you're suffering through racism, please give me some of that.
He has got a white gardener, a white chef, and all various white people that work for him, a white driver. So if that's racism, LeBron, please, please share some of that with the rest of us.
But you know, on a more serious note, I want to say something that will really uplift Americans. Because sometimes I know when you see that stuff, it can seem so depressing over and over on the news.
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If I opened my inbox and showed you the amount of celebrities that have written me privately, that silent majority that we're always talking about. They've written to me and said, "I'm finally starting to see the truth. I can't stand being in Hollywood. I'm not allowed to use my voice to say what I actually believe."
These are the same celebrities that are actually posting the black squares on Instagram and saying we must care about black lives and they're saying they're doing it basically under duress. Because if they don't, they'll lose their entire careers.
So don't believe that things aren't shifting just because we see people like LeBron James and the NBA painting Black Lives Matter on the ground. There is something shaking and something happening in this country, and more and more people are awakened alive to what's really at risk, which is really the values and the principles that this country was built upon.
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LEVIN: When you walk down the streets, when you eat at restaurants and so forth, many people know who you are, particularly people who despise you like Black Lives Matter and others, do you fear for your safety?
OWENS: I never fear for my safety and I will tell you why, because the left is -- they're actually extreme cowards. They only work well if they're in groups. If they see me and I'm walking down the street one-on-one, they don't say anything.
I know when to expect them to act out and that's you usually going to be if I'm doing a college campus or I'm doing a speech and they can show up in, you know, hordes and there can be 400 of them outside to say things.
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I don't fear for my safety. I know I'm a particularly brave person, and I think that what we're seeing right now, as crazy as it looks, it's really the last squeals of a dying animal. They feel threatened, their foundation is threatened.
Minorities are waking up in this country. We represent the Achilles heel of the Democratic Party and to liberal ideology, and when minorities are awake, all of the games have to stop because what they love to use, we are the conduit, right? White supremacy and racism. These are the things that they claim to be fighting, even though what they're really trying to do is usher in a period of racism, right? They are pro-segregationists.
And I think that I'm unbelievably optimistic every single day because when I hear them screaming, what I see and what I hear is fear.
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LEVIN: Candace Owens, the book is "Blackout." When we come back, I want to ask you this. Who's behind these riots? When I watch them on TV, and it's really not the mainstream media that is the left, it is citizen journalists with iPhones and so forth.
I'm not seeing a lot of people rising up from these various communities. I'm seeing a lot of white people. I'm seeing what we learn later are some criminals. I'm seeing Marxists who are shipped in from city to city, maybe they're even paid but not seeing this great uprising in the in the inner city communities. I would very interested in your take on that.
We'll be right back.
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LEVIN: Welcome back, America. We're back with Candace Owens. Now, I admit she's not Bob Woodward. But on the other hand, she likes to do books that are serious and substantive and not based on gossip and disgruntled former employees and so forth and so on.
And you can get her outstanding book. It's coming out very soon, in the next few days at amazon.com, amazon.com or any major bookstore. Candace Owens, the book is "Blackout."
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Candace, I want to ask you, who is behind these riots?
OWENS: I'll actually add to the questions. Who is behind Black Lives Matter? Where are the billions of dollars that Black Lives Matter has raised over the years by using black faces that were murdered or killed? Where has all the money gone to?
There's no Black Lives Matter school. There's no Black Lives Matter building. You don't see a Black Lives Matter campus. So where has all of these billions of dollars gone? They've magically disappeared. It's almost like they've gone into the middle of a hole.
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So these are really good questions to ask, and what I will say is the obvious answer is that these are tremendously well-funded efforts. I live in Washington, D.C., and 70 percent of the people that were arrested rioting and protesting weren't from Washington, D.C.
You guys will recall a couple of years ago, I was attacked in a restaurant by a group of Antifa thugs. And I will tell you, it was 9:00 a.m. in the morning on a Monday morning, and there is no way that a bunch of people left work and got into Antifa garb and showed up unless this was their full time job.
The American people know this. It's time for our Department of Justice to begin investigating this and seeing where this money is going, who is funding these protests, who is funding these riots and who is funding the destruction of America? Because these are trained Marxists and this is their full time job without question.
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LEVIN: And the cofounders admit they are trained Marxists. So it's right there in front of faces.
Now, Candace, let me ask you this. The media in this country, they're not going to give you a break. They're not going to talk about you or your book. They'll put in any crackpot Professor who is preaching anti- Americanism.
Aren't the media in this country not just regurgitating what the left is saying, but leading the parade in many respects?
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OWENS: Very much so. I'm a big believer that it's time for "New York Times" versus Sullivan to be reversed. The media is able to go out and they're able to tell flagrant lies because there's no accountability. They are allowed to lie.
They're just protected. They can say whatever they want, because they're journalists even know that they are -- even if they are willfully lying and smearing. Imagine what this country would look like if the media had to tell the truth, if it was at risk of their job in their establishment and to their organizations, if they were forced to tell the truth, and this is something that we should be having a discussion about because it's gotten ridiculous.
I mean, they will literally make an entire story up and there's no accountability. And I'm not concerned about it, only because what we're seeing now is that people are not trusting the media anymore.
It is because of this widespread distrust in the mainstream media that people like me were able to come to the forefront because people are desperate for a different perspective, and are desperate for truths. And they will say who is out there saying something different than the media, which is essentially just saying, hate Trump, Trump bad, orange man bad; no matter what, resist, resist, resist Trump.
And voices, like mine have been able, you know, to rise up on YouTube, on social media to tour the entire country and to say, here is why I am a black conservative. Here's what I believe, and here's why I believe that you should listen to this various perspective and how it will improve your life.
So I thank the media for failing because I wouldn't exist if they hadn't.
LEVIN: Succinctly, why are you a black conservative?
OWENS: I'm a black conservative because I am on the side of the truth. I'm a black conservative because I know my history. I'm a black conservative because I understand that what the left is trying to do is not progressive, it is actually regressive.
Virtually everything that the left does leads to regressive results for the black community. Every time they say they're helping, they're hurting and you can really start to see this take place starting in the 1960s.
I talk a lot about Lyndon Baines Johnson. He was an outwardly open, proud, racist, and yet, in the school systems, he is somebody that is celebrated.
We are taught as black Americans in school that he saved us because he inked the Civil Rights Bill in 1964, which he virtually had to because of the uprisings.
I am a black conservative, because I understand how welfare has harmed black America. I'm a black conservative because I believe in myself, because I don't think there's a difference, Mark, between you and I. I don't look at you as a white man and say, I can't do what he can do.
I look around and I say anything, Mark can do, I can do as well and that's because of the freedoms in this country that I want to protect. I do not want to live in a society, Mark, where people can say that because of the color of my skin, I'm given certain advantages that you need to hit a quota of how many black people need to be in the room, how many black people need to be somewhere.
That is the bigotry of low expectations. I don't need Harvard to look at my application and say you can come in because you're black, even though this white person had a better score, because I know that I can get that same score as a white person.
That is what I am offering in my book, "Blackout." I am offering black Americans a sense of courage, a sense of responsibility, and a sense of confidence. And I know that this will be the thing that can save America.
I'm so proud of this book. I'm so proud of what I've learned on this journey, and in large part, it is due to so many people that have believed in me, so I do want to say thank you to all the Americans that have been with me on this crazy journey.
And if you are a white American and you buy this book, after you read it, please donate it to a black child, because I was that black child who didn't know all that America had to offer and I want this to be something that instills hope in the hearts and the minds of every black American.
LEVIN: Candace Owens, isn't the key word here liberty? You never hear the word liberty out of the mouth of a leftist. You always hear words about government and suppression and oppression, but you never hear the word liberty and you certainly never hear the phrase individual liberty.
Because for the left, for some reason, socialism, centralized government, the Iron Fist of the bureaucracy is supposed to be utopia. But isn't that the key? Liberty?
OWENS: Liberty is the key. And the way that they're able to strip that away is very simple. It's by making sure that people depend on nothing but the government, like you just said, and black America was really the experiment with that.
If you want to look at the reasons why you look around mainstream media and they mock people that have faith is because they want there to be faith in nothing but the government. They want people to turn to government for all of their problems, and they want the government to offer all of the solutions.
In many ways, the left wants to replace God with governments. It's the same with family. It's what why do you see this attack on the family through various means? Radicalized feminism, which I cover in my book, and Black Lives Matter which we talk about in my book. It is because if you remove the pillars of faith and you remove the pillars of family, it gives the government the room to grow, and say we are your family now. We are -- we are the only faith that you should have in and that is really at the core of Marxist ideology, give the people absolutely nothing to believe in, but the government itself.
So you're absolutely right. I mean, where we're at right now, it's a scary time in America, but I also always want people to feel optimistic because I'm hopeful every single day that people like you and people like me, people that are fighting on the ground are really changing the narrative and showing people what the truth is.
LEVIN: Well, I do think the President is going to make significant inroads in this election with minorities, particularly African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans who have seen what the Democratic Party will do and the Democratic Party will do nothing more and more centralized government, more and more phony promises.
The Democratic Party is about the Democratic Party. They're about power. That's their history. That's who they are.
Candace Owens. The book is "Blackout: How Black America Can Make its Second Escape from the Democratic Plantation." Well done and thank you for your patriotism. God bless you.
OWENS: Thank you so much.
LEVIN: We'll be right back.
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MARIANNE RAFFERTY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CORRESPONDENT: Live from "America's News Headquarters," I'm Marianne Rafferty.
Two Los Angeles County Deputies with only 14 months on the job, gunned down while they were sitting in their squad car last night in Compton. Both were rushed to surgery and were in critical condition as of yesterday. Authorities have offered a $100,000.00 reward for any information leading to their capture.
The President weighed in on the incident calling the suspects quote, "animals that must be hit hard."
And the President not too far from that shooting incident as he continues his tour of the West with another campaign rally in Henderson, Nevada tonight. This will be the President's first indoor rally since his event in Tulsa three months ago.
You can watch the rally live on foxnews.com or on the Fox News YouTube channel.
I'm Marianne Rafferty now back to “Life, Liberty & Levin.”
LEVIN: Welcome back America. It's becoming quite apparent that the media and the Democratic Party and their various surrogates have no intention of allowing Donald Trump to become President of the United States again through the re-election.
It's clear they're cancelling out Election Night. They have pushed this whole mail-in voter effort on states that really can't handle any massive mail-in voter effort. Although, they are prepared to playing the President of the United States.
They keep talking about violence. They keep talking about if they're not winning on Election Night, they will win later. And if they are winning on Election Night, then it's over.
I think we used to call this in my neighborhood heads I win, tails you lose. In any event. There's been a tremendously well written piece on this by Michael Anton, "The Coming Coup" which he wrote in "The American Mind." He has a fantastic new book out too that kind of overlaps this subject. "The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return."
Michael Anton is a former Trump senior national security official. He's a Senior Fellow At the Claremont Institute, a research fellow at Hillsdale College, Michael Anton, "The Coming Coup." Explain.
MICHAEL ANTON, FORMER TRUMP SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY OFFICIAL. Well, the Democrats are talking openly about not accepting the results of the November election. I mean, there are, you know, 10 or 12 data points at this point one could point to.
To me the strongest is when Hillary Clinton herself who lost to Donald Trump in 2016, said Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances. That's a direct quote, any circumstances. I mean, any would include a 50- state landslide, not that I'm predicting that, but any circumstances.
So I think what you just laid out is exactly right. If they win, if Joe Biden wins on November 3rd, then it's over and we stop counting the votes. If it looks like the President has won on November 3rd, then we just keep counting until Joe Biden pulls ahead in certain states and tips the Electoral College to him; however, long that takes.
In all of my life, you know, anytime there's a close race and it goes into a recount, I can think of only one prominent example when the Republican won, and that was Florida in 2000, and that only happened because the Supreme Court had to step in and shut it down.
But what makes this even more ominous is Biden himself, the President's opponent in this election has openly speculated about the military removing -- speculated is actually too soft word -- he said confidently, the military will drag him out of there, meaning the White House.
Two Army officers wrote an open letter to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs saying be prepared, General to deploy the 82nd Airborne, an active duty combat -- overseas combat unit to remove the President from the White House on January 20, 2021.
Now, to his credit, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has said the military will play quote, "no role" unquote, in the upcoming election. I hope he is serious, and I hope that holds.
And also when I've had the opportunity to talk about this piece publicly, I've said, look, to any military officer, whether current or former who is listening to this, please get the word to your friends who are loyal to the U.S. military, who are loyal to the Constitution to knock this off and to not -- if somebody tries to whisper in your ear that this is what you need to be doing in January of 2021, tell them to buzz off and that you are loyal to the Constitution. You are loyal to your oath and you are loyal to the American Military that was founded literally in the American Revolution and is one of our cornerstone institutions that defend our freedom.
LEVIN: Do you think this is one of the reasons this leftist Democrat, Jeffrey Goldberg in "The Atlantic" with his four anonymous sources, probably a couple of ex-generals, wrote the piece to try and soften up the support from the military for the President of the United States about him calling them losers and suckers, things, I have never heard the President say, things I'm sure you never heard the President say and you worked for the President of the United States.
It's so out of sorts for this President to ever say anything like that. You think that's what they're doing? Softening it up?
ANTON: Yes, I think absolutely. Why? You know, this alleged incident took place nearly two years ago, why are we only writing about it now? Why are we only hearing about it now?
I was with the President for the first 14 months of his administration. I went on every foreign trip with him where we did a lot of base visits. I went on several base visits with him in the United States of America.
I saw him talk to troops. I saw him sit down, have lunch, or just chats with enlisted soldiers. I saw him run away all over schedule, because he would not get up and leave if a single soldier in that room wanted to talk to him shake his hand or take a picture.
I never ever heard him disparage American troops like that. It's impossible for me to believe that he could have said something like that. I think that story is completely made up.
LEVIN: It's really quite amazing when you see Joe Biden, who is supported by Black Lives Matter which hates the United States military, calls us imperialists and colonialists, and is backed by Bernie Sanders and that gang which despises the United States military and with a Vice President through sequestration when they were eviscerating the United States military, how the left and the media get away with this, how do they get away with this?
ANTON: They get away with it just by having almost complete control of the media with the exception of Fox News and some internet sites, but all the other networks, the cable networks, the broadcast networks, popular entertainment, social media, it's something that I call in the book, "The Stakes," I call it the megaphone, right?
They hold the megaphone, and the megaphone is all of the organs, the actual institutions that push out the narrative and the narrative is, you know, Trump is illegitimate. Trump was elected by the Russians, et cetera, et cetera, and they just blast that through the megaphone at high decibels and then they censor or they de-platform people who point out the contradictions, as you just pointed out.
You know, the Obama administration for eight years, inadequately funded the military even as it committed it to all kinds of missions, you know, overcommitted it into dumb missions that aren't in the American interest, and now, they're able to portray themselves as saviors of the military, in part because anybody like you and I, you are fortunate to have a platform and a network that backs you, but it's very hard for others to try to push out a narrative -- a counter narrative or correction on social media, because they'll just get censored or they'll get their account suspended or locked, or they'll get their YouTube site taken down or whatever.
We've seen more of that in 2020 than we've seen, I think in all of my lifetime, more censorship and de-platforming and muzzling.
LEVIN: When we come back, Michael Anton, I want to ask you about General Mattis because Bob Woodward exposed something maybe he didn't intend to expose and I want to focus on what General Mattis had said or tried, as well as your book, in which you point out in "The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return" how crucial this election is. We'll be right back.
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LEVIN: Welcome back. I am with Michael Anton who served on the National Security Council during the early parts of the Trump administration. He has a fantastic new book out, "The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return," and before we get to that, Michael, this Bob Woodward book, this guy goes around, he typically interviews disgruntled former employees.
He interviewed the President and then he kind of stitches together a hit chop. So I really don't want to focus on his book. I'll let the left-wing media promote it. But there is something in his book that's actually quite interesting about Mattis and quotes the former D.N.I. and the former Secretary of Defense, what was that?
ANTON: It relates an anecdote which, you know, given that this is a book, presumably all anonymously sourced -- who knows if it's true or not -- but if it's true, it's very troubling that former Secretary Mattis while he was Secretary of Defense, contemplated colluding, I don't know what other verb will do, with other members of the President's Cabinet to remove the President.
You know that he had a conversation with the D.N.I., the former D.N.I., Dan Coats, which they discussed, maybe the necessity of them coming together and bringing in other people to remove the President, which I find utterly shocking. That may be the closest the United States to my knowledge has ever been to an actual coup in my lifetime or in its history. You know, to senior national security officials discussing this.
Now, it is one thing if either the Secretary or the former D.N.I. disagreed with the President, there's a way to handle very serious disagreements, which is you resign, and if you think it's important to air your reasons for resigning, you can do so in some kind of public statement, or you can just resign and go off quietly into under retirement.
But to talk about using your sitting office to remove a duly elected President, I find very disturbing and shocking, and I think it should trouble every American and it should especially trouble members of the military, a military which General Mattis, by all accounts faithfully served for a long time, but, you know, I just can't see any kind of justification for even speculation along those lines, much less actual talk of it from two officials at that rank.
LEVIN: You know, his name keeps popping up, Michael Anton, in an open letter where they've said the President of the United States is violating the Constitution, just in time for the liberal media to exploit it with respect to Lafayette Park.
People are speculating, of course, we don't know that one of the anonymous sources for "The Atlantic" piece may have been Mattis among others. Now we have this piece about Mattis talking with Coats, again, if Mr. Mattis would like to come on this program, I'd love to discuss this with him with Coats about potentially removing -- potentially -- they are dealing with the President of the United States.
I mean, Lincoln had problem with generals, too. So it's not just because these guys are generals that they're believed and trusted in every respect. We're not talking about combat here. We're talking about in the political realm. This really is extraordinary, isn't it?
ANTON: It is. I've not seen anything like it. I mean, it, you know, it reminds one of either of things that happened fairly unfortunately, all too commonly in foreign countries or in, you know, Hollywood movies, you know, idea of a military coup against the President, but it's not supposed to happen in real life in the United States.
So it's shocking. I hope Americans are shocked. And again, I hope members of the military are shocked. And think, you know, I hope they get in touch with maybe some of the people who are formerly in the military who are openly talking about this.
If any of these guys are your friends, call them up and say, knock it off. You're not helping the United States of America. You're not helping the United States military. Just stop talking like this, and certainly don't act on anything like this.
LEVIN: And I might add, you're right. Plus, they're on the wrong side. May I say that, too? They just are.
Your book is "The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return." Let's begin this way. The point of no return. What do you mean by that?
ANTON: I mean, my greatest fear, which is I feared in 2016 was that the next Democratic presidency, the next Democratic administration would lead eventually, sooner rather than later, to blue state one party politics from coast to coast. It would turn the 50 states into a kind of New York or California, where there might have been -- there might be a sort of a rump Republican Party, but it's locked out of the Electoral College and can't gain and maintain a House and Senate Majority again, and so is effectively not an opposition.
There's no more check or break on blue power as exactly what has happened in New York State and California, where the Democrats rule and they get what they want. And we've seen what it's done to those places. The book starts with an account of California which is my home state.
I'm very familiar with California, and it's a sort of bittersweet account, because I remember what it was when it was a sort of light red state, you know, not a very conservative state, but you know, leans Republican, and had a moderate Democratic Party.
This is the state that gave us Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, among others, and to what it is now, which is, it is sort of just Deep Blue, Pacific Coast soft tyranny where the governor at whim mandates whatever he wants.
I don't want that for the United States. I'm very worried about it. I was delighted that President Trump won the 2016 election, in part for that reason, and in part because I believed in his program, but now I think the stakes in 2020, unfortunately, are even higher than they were in 2016, and I think that a Biden victory would lead to exactly the scenario that I outlined.
LEVIN: All right, I want to get into that when we return. And if the Democrats do sweep, God forbid, will they change the electoral process the way they did in California to ensure that the Democratic Party can't lose any time in the near future?
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEVIN: Welcome back. Michael Anton, former senior official of the National Security Council in the early part of the Trump administration. If the Democrats sweep, will they change this country forever and make it impossible for Republicans to win?
ANTON: Well, that's my fear. I mean, they've already discussed adding states, making D.C. a state which has been on the wish list for a long time. So there's two more senators right there -- well, it's already part of the Electoral College -- but Puerto Rico, two more senators from there and some more electoral votes, but more ominous, Biden has said he will amnesty every illegal alien in the country.
And either the talking point number has been that it's 11 million, well, a study from Yale a couple of years ago says it's more like 22 million, all of whom wants amnesty will be eligible under current U.S. immigration law to bring relatives over.
And so we could see an enormous population swell by immigration just in the first term alone, and immigrants tend to vote Democratic. In fact, the highest correlation between Democratic voting is the percentage of foreign born.
If you want to know which way a district votes, look at the percentage of foreign born. Nothing correlates higher with Democratic voting. And I think that they will strategically do that to tip purple states blue and then have an electoral lock so that the Republicans can't win a national election anymore, can't control the Senate.
You know, they might hang on in the House for a while, who knows? But -- and think about what they'll do just with Executive Order? So I think when they have absolute power, they'll try to make it so that they never lose power again and then go on implementing their agenda without any breaks, without any compromises and without any real need to feel that they have any reason to hold back because there's nobody to hold them back.
I very much worry what that will look like and I worry what reactions also it might provoke. I think we could see a period of really great and troubling instability in this country in the 2020s if the Democrats get their way and refuse in any way to moderate or compromise.
But the events of 2020 and the rhetoric of 2020 suggests to me troublingly that they're not in the mood to compromise and they don't feel any moderation at all. They are screaming to get back in power get back behind the wheel of the car as it were and push the gas pedal to the floor hard.
LEVIN: I think that's right, and they're talking about eliminating the filibuster rules; in other words, all the systems, the brake systems that are in this Republic and all the brake systems that are in the legislative process, they intend to do away with them because I think they're tired -- they are tired of having power, sort of here and there that they want power all the time. Am I right about that?
ANTON: Yes. And they don't like the system of checks and balances and separation of powers and all the safeguards against tyranny that our founders built into the Constitution.
The left hasn't liked those, not just today, the attacks on all of those safeguards have been going on now for roughly 125 years, beginning with the progressives in the late 19th Century who said, the problem with America is this Constitution that prevents us from doing everything that we know, we experts, we geniuses know what needs to be done.
If only we can get rid of or get around this Constitution, we can implement our utopia, that argument has been being made from the left for more than a century, and it's chipped away at our Constitution over time, and now I fear that the chipping is giving away to a crumbling and we may see a kind of a real just mass erosion all at once this year or next year. It's frightening.
And that's why I think the stakes of this election are so, so high.
LEVIN: And I think everything you're saying is absolutely correct. I think this is why they're pushing the propaganda, the 1619 Project.
ANTON: Yes.
LEVIN: This is why they're not going to condemn the Black Lives Matter and Antifa movements. This is why Bernie Sanders has such a significant input into the agenda should Biden and Harris get into power, they view this as the one opportunity, and even if it only takes two years, they're going to push as much through as they humanly possibly can to forever change this nation in so many negative ways.
Michael Anton, I want to thank you. The book is outstanding, "The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return." You can get it at amazon.com. I highly, highly suggest that you do.
And I want to thank you. You're a great patriot. The best to you.
ANTON: Thank you. Thank you very much.
LEVIN: We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEVIN: Welcome back, America. In 1941, as you know, this nation was attacked by Imperial Japan at Pearl Harbor, and we earnestly got into World War II.
And sometimes I wonder, with what goes on internally in this country, the fifth column as we call it, undermining our nation from within. Could we win World War II again?
And I think of my own family. When we were attacked Pearl Harbor, my grandfather at the time, was 34 years old. He joined the Marine Corps. He would eventually fight at Iwo Jima and Guam.
He loved this country. He believed in this country. He wasn't a wealthy man. He used to drive an old truck from out the outskirts of Philadelphia to Pittsburgh to pick up coal and drive it back to Philadelphia, Chestnut Hill, they called it the time in German town and go door to door and sell the coal because people used it to cook and keep their homes warm.
His brother in law, Teddy, he joined the Marines, too, and he would sit in the passenger's side of the truck when my grandfather would get the call in the Pittsburgh area. He fought at Guadalcanal.
That same year, another man joined the Army Air Corps. He was 17 years old. He was my father, who passed away two years ago, the age of 93.
My father, my grandfather, my great uncle, they could see what was going on in this country today, you know that they would say to me? Fight them. Fight them. Fight them. Save this country. Preserve your nation. Preserve your liberty.
Do whatever you have to do. We must organize. We must be resolute. We must win this election and we must win this election big. You stand with me?
I'll see you next time on “Life, Liberty & Levin.”
END
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