Former CIA Agent Mike Baker Talks Civil Unrest

It doesn't mean just because you don't like Trump as an individual that suddenly you're okay with hard left policies. But I think the Democrats make that mistake. They think that that's the solution to Trump. Go as far away from him as possible. Yeah. And then you can't find a center. I think exactly. That's the solution. I think the solution is somewhere in the center. And when you see shit like what's happening in Portland and Seattle, I think people are more aware than ever now that civil unrest is like it's very strange. It's very strange to watch them try to break into that. What was the building in Portland they were trying to bring into it? The Hatfield Courthouse. Yeah. The Federal Courthouse. Yeah. That was insane. Yeah. Watching that was insane. I don't understand the motivation. Connecting that to how do you connect that in Portland, the most liberal city in the country? How do you, arguably right, probably the most liberal. Yeah. Seattle. Portland. Right there. How do you connect that to Black Lives Matter? I mean, how do you connect that to George Floyd's death? How do you connect that to, why? I just don't understand. Why would you try to break into the courthouse? They're trying to recreate what went wrong, what didn't work in Seattle, right? That whole zone, the autonomous zone. Yeah. That didn't work. I mean, that was nonsense. It was crazy. You made a worse version of America in six blocks. It's like one of those little tiny little, if you took a glass dome and you put little animals in there and you let them eat each other alive. That was like, we're going to create utopian glass. They made a worse version of the United States. They put up borders immediately. They stopped people from coming in. They had armed guards. They wind up using police, they didn't have cops, but they have people that act like cops and beat the fuck out of people for filming. The whole thing was madness. They had murders. It was crazy. It was quick. I mean, look, Portland, I know Portland extremely well. My parents lived in Portland for a couple of decades. It's a beautiful place. It used to be a hell of a place, but over the years, and I know Republicans and Democrats who feel the same way who were in Portland and the surrounding area, and they all feel like this place is slowly circling down a toilet because of local and state management. What happened in Portland? Not really a surprise. It's the same ... The people that do this sort of activity, right, that have been referred to as Antifa or anarchists or whatever, they're the same sort of trust of fairy and bottom feeding folks in really any city in the world who engage in a WTO protest because it's cool to get out there and protest. I don't understand the mentality, but if you try to figure out a motivation for them, you'll lose your mind because they really don't have one. You could take 10 of those people out of Portland who are engaged in the violent activity and ask them, well, why are you doing this? You'll get 10 different answers. They really don't have. It's not like that. The sad part about it is they hijacked very legitimate protests over really serious, important questions about how do we improve policing around the country? How do we get to that point? I tell you, the most disappointing part about it is after the tragedy with George Floyd, if the focus had been on, okay, here's what we have to do. We have to, seriously, not just lip service, we have to improve the policing to solve this particular issue. How do we do that? Well, there's certain logistical things you can do. You can improve your vetting and hiring of police candidates, of applicants for the job. You can do that. That's a protocol you can put in place. You can improve the training. That costs money, so defunding the police is kind of fucked. You can improve the training and make it continuous. It's not just a one-time thing. It's continuous training on how to respond to situations. It's like weapons training. If you don't keep doing it, if you're not always practicing, it just doesn't work. And then what can you do? You can also improve disciplinary action. Those are concrete things that you can do. They're not easy, but it's not as heavy a lift as deciding in the aftermath of the George Floyd tragedy that what we're rarely going to do is we're going to remove racism from the hearts and minds of people. This is not going to happen. I'd like to think it would. It's a theory, hey, great, get rid of racism. What this should have been was a protest about doing things that actually will impact meaningfully people's lives. And it veered off because people wanted to feel self-righteous. It veered off into, well, you have to prove how pure you are. You have to remove racism. Now, I know black people that object to white people. I know white people that object to people not of their race. I know Hispanics that don't like people of non-Hispanics. Racism exists, sad to say, right? And all mankind, it's a human element of nature. Would you rather spin your wheels and act self-righteous and try to say, well, we're going to have this exercise where we remove racism from mankind? Would you rather say in the aftermath of this, let's do the things that can actually make a difference? And that's what we didn't do. And then legitimate protests over the anger and frustration about all this got further hijacked by, again, antifa, anarchists, whatever you want to call it. I think that's a big part of the problem. Ben Shapiro and I had this conversation about the protests and this term where they are large, mostly peaceful protests. And he had a hilarious point. He said, OJ Simpson had a mostly peaceful night the night he killed his wife. It was only three minutes of the entire day that wasn't peaceful. That is a fucking great point. Yeah. But it is true in the protest that most of those people want the world to be a better place. Right. The problem is the people that hijacked that and are trying to light the federal buildings on fire and smash monuments, particularly, I mean, they're going after Abraham Lincoln. I mean, Jesus Christ. He's the guy that freed the fucking slaves. Like, what are we doing? Are we going to erase history? Yeah. I would have loved if Abraham Lincoln could have had a time machine and gone to 2020 and understood what we know now about systemic racism. However, he lived in the 1700s when he wrote with a fucking feather. Okay? Give the guy a break. The world was a weird place back then. Well, and that's part of it, is trying to judge people of the past by current morals or current understanding, current thinking is pretty absurd, right? It doesn't justify past bad actions. You know what? This idea that you're going to erase history or remove history or not learn from it going forward is it discredits the ability of people to have rational thought, right? To understand and look at a context, look at something in context and say, okay, nowadays that's unacceptable, but okay, I get why these things occurred. It's tragic or it's regrettable, whatever. I mean, look, in the UK, they were attacking the statue of Churchill. Yeah. I mean, holy fuck. It's crazy. Yeah. I mean, I think I said, did I just say Lincoln 1700s? I meant 1800. Well, it was 1865, right? Yeah. But either way, the idea that this guy is supposed to be a perfect person back then, look, history is supposed to be about the things that happened, the people that made a difference and how we got to where we are today. And Lincoln is a big part. And the 1865, the Emancipation Proclamation, that's a big part of how we are who we are today. Look, it's horrible that the early settlers brought over slaves from Africa. It's horrible that slaves still exist today. All these things are horrible. They're horrible, but taking down statues of people that made a difference and made change. Look, if you want to take down statues of Confederate generals and stuff like that, there's a good argument there. It's a good argument that maybe we shouldn't have those or maybe we should have them somewhere. Like in the same place we have a statue of Genghis Khan. Maybe they shouldn't be, you know what I'm saying? Is there a statue of Genghis Khan? I'm sure there is. Yeah, somewhere. Somewhere in Mongolia. There's got to be, right? Genghis Khan killed 10% of the fucking population while he was alive. But it doesn't mean there shouldn't be some recognition of this historical figure when you're talking about 2020. Well I think, interestingly, and this doesn't... Again, you can... The problem is nowadays, right? You've got sort of the righteous mob on the left and the righteous mob on the right. And the problem people make is they try to placate one side or the other thinking somehow they're always going to be pure enough. You're never pure enough for the self-righteous mob no matter where they are on the spectrum. Right. They're always finding new... There's a new benchmark. There's always that opportunity. But a lot of the Confederate statues out there were put up in an effort to... And this sounds weird, but in an effort to try to unify the country again, right? In the aftermath of the Civil War and there was this element of saying, let's try to... And so you think, okay, that's a... I know a lot of them were put up actually during the Civil Rights Movement. They were put up when they were thinking that people were getting too highfalutin and they wanted to celebrate Confederate... And that's absolutely true. Those are the really cheap ones too. It's true. They're really shittily made because they made them real quick. But I mean, so the point being is I agree. If you want to take those down, well sure, yeah. I mean, why would you have a statue of some Confederate leader? Fine, take it out. Take it off the streets. I get that, right? And if that helps people feel terrific, put it in a museum or whatever you're going to do with it. But George Washington? George Washington, yeah, I know exactly. Abraham Lincoln. It's funny, when they were taking down Confederate statues, Trump once said, what's next? You're going to take down George Washington? And everyone was laughing like they're not going to do that, but yet they are going to do that now. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what? And two things again, as always can be true at the same time. Somebody could be doing some things you disagree with vehemently. They could have also done something that helped move the country forward, did something that had extreme positive effects. Well, that's the Genghis Khan argument. They opened up trade with China in the process of killing 10 million people. He opened up trade with the East. Was he a free trader? I didn't know that. Yeah, sure. He's a free trade guy. Free trade slash raper. That was your first NAFTA. Murderer. He killed so many people, they changed the carbon footprint of the Earth. Yeah. The New York Times had this crazy article about it. He literally killed 10% of the people on Earth. He was an angry man. Look, it's awful that we have history that's filled with terrible acts and deeds, but I don't think that removing statues of people who tried to make a difference within the context of their time. With Lincoln 1865, with George Washington 1700s. You're talking about people that when they were doing this, they were the best example of humanity that you could find. They were the best example of what we had. When George Washington was the first president of the United States, you want to talk about a fucking radical undertaking, this crazy experiment in self-government while they escaped from the grasp of Europe. It's really nuts. Again, I think there's an element here that we missed the boat maybe again. We've gone through these. It's not like we haven't had protests before, Black Lives Matter protests and over the same issues of police brutality and all that. It all falls into that same bucket from my perspective that we don't do the hard things. The hard things would have been to say from a local state and federal position, let's enact these different ... protocols that can improve policing. Let's do those things that we need to do. That's a heavy lift in a way. The easier things are, let's tear down the statue or find a way to make us feel better about ourselves without necessarily having it. It's like this shell game, I think, that the politicians sometimes play. You saw it in Portland where, okay, let's just placate this for a while. It'll make everybody feel better and then the protest will die down. Seattle's the best example, right? When the mayor came out and said, she called it, maybe it's the summer of love? Yeah, yeah, yeah, 67, the summer of love. Have they totally squashed that now? Has that whole place brought back to the original business owners? I don't know is the answer to that question. I do know that they've been looking at how do we do community-based policing? How do we defund the police and yet still have something that resembles a response to the citizens' need for security? I don't know what any of all that dribble means. If you want to improve the policing, it's an investment, right? It's not defunding, but again, defunding and saying that and saying, this is what I'm for, it's an easy fucking way to feel good and to placate people and then you don't do shit and then five years from now we have another incident because you didn't actually do the things that make policing better. Well, you get where you got in New York City. It gets even worse for the citizens because now the police don't have any faith at all in the government. They're not respected, they're not appreciated and you've seen this giant uptick in crime because their presence isn't there anymore. It's really crazy, man. It's like a movie. I've never thought, if you went back to March when we shut down, I never thought I would be sitting here with you at the end of early August here and we would be talking about this. I would have never thought that this would have taken place, that we would have legitimate civil unrest in this country, people getting shot in the streets in protests. I know that there's a real concern with a lot of these cities that someone's going to try to recreate what happened in Seattle, recreate what happened in Portland and they're worried about it. The thing about it is it seems so organized. It really does. It doesn't seem that haphazard. It seems organized. How do these things get started? How do you get something as big as these Portland riots? Well, it's a really good question. Sometimes what you see is what appears to be a grassroots movement or grassroots activity happening just swelling up from a couple of neighborhoods. Yes, there was an element of that, but you also see, like if you're talking about activist environmental groups as an example, you'll also see some commonality between some of these groups. You'll see commonality in communications advice, in financing, in legal assistance and support from national groups. And yet it's in their agenda, it's to their advantage to make it appear as if it's a grassroots movement. So that all stays in the background. I'd argue that, yes, some of this, and again, not to disappear down some rabbit hole where it's a George Soros funded thing. That's where I was going. Yeah, but I mean, are there some elements that help with communication support or transportation assistance or legal advice or whatever it may be? Absolutely. Are these things, very rarely is there an actual genuine organic grassroots movement that has no outside organizational support. That's this spontaneous and this big. But again, look, we're putting our tinfoil hats on. But if anybody can put that on, you can put them on. I left mine out in the car, but I'll go get it. You've been on the inside. Even for the CIA, you know how it works. Well, we very rarely organized things like this. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying that you know that you guys did it. I'm saying you understand how these people operate. Right. Right. In a way that someone like me doesn't. And also, again, look, we've talked about this in the past. I'm not necessarily a conspiracy theorist, but sometimes, yeah, sometimes you got to follow the threads that you can pull on. And sometimes it takes you down an interesting path and you think, okay, maybe there is something to this. I wouldn't say you're a conspiracy theorist, but I would say you're open to the possibility of conspiracy. Like when you and I talked about the Martin Luther King assassination and you took a big pause and you said that one does not make sense. Yeah. No, I agree. I still feel that way. Yeah. That one is filled with holes. And I agree as well. I looked into it much more after you and I talked and it's, yeah. That's very strange. The way that you sometimes can get actually further into it without kind of disappearing down some of these peripheral side stories and issues is money. Look for funding. Look for issues of where did money go? Because that sometimes will take you down a more legitimate path. A lot of times investigations get built on very shaky ground because you start with a theory or whatever and you're never starting on firm ground. Sometimes when you follow the money, it keeps you a little more grounded. Right. Yeah. Follow the money. Follow the money. Well, that's the thing with this. It's like, where is the money coming from? Like where is the money coming from that organizes and helps these people get out of jail and all that jazz? Well, and there's certain things that... Let's go back to Portland for a minute. One of the problems is I think the media, journalism in general, isn't anywhere near as curious or concerned with investigation as it used to be. It's easier now to just say, this is where I'm at. I'm subjective. Of course I'm subjective. And so here I go. The idea of objectivity in journalism is pretty much out the window. With Portland, early on, for instance, they published mug shots and names of, I think there were maybe a dozen of the individuals who arrested for violent activity. Violent activity. Now, a curious journalist you would have thought would have said, let's do some research. Let's look at all these people and let's look at their backgrounds. It's already public information. They've already posted it. Let's dig into this and find out who are these people? Are there any linkages or any commonalities between all these individuals? Can we find something that's interesting there? Maybe we won't, but let's do some investigation. You'd like to think that's what journalism used to be, but it doesn't seem like it is anymore, but that doesn't happen. I think there's a problem. Here's one of the problems. Most journalists are left wing. There's a giant number. I don't know what the percentage of it is, but if you want to go with whether it's Newsweek or CNN or the New York Times or Washington Post or many, many, many, many of these papers and organizations lean left, there's a dirty secret. The dirty secret is Antifa acts as the thug enforcers of the left. The people that do things like this, whether you approve of violence or disapprove of violence, what they're doing is they act as the people doing the dirty work that many people on the left think has to be done in order to enact real change. Now if you had the same thing in the right, imagine, my friend Tim Dillon said this, imagine if the proud boys were lighting Portland on fire. Can you imagine if we had a Democratic president and the proud boys were trying to break into the courthouse and light Portland on fire? People would go fucking crazy. It would be terrifying if it was a different political ideology but the same exact actions. So because these actions are done with the correct political ideology, under the guise of racial justice, under the guise of reforming our government, so then everybody's okay with people literally burning books. They're throwing books on a pile. That's a Bible. Go ahead. It's fucking crazy. They're burning Bibles. What does the Bible have to do with it? The Bible gives a lot of people comfort, whether you believe in it or not. You're throwing stacks of Bibles and then you're lighting them on fire in front of a courthouse. What if they'd been throwing the Quran? Right. A very good example. A very good example. Yeah. It would all be losing our minds. But Nancy Pelosi came out and said, well, people are going to do what they're going to do. Really, Nancy? Really? Well, she's an odd duck, that lady. She's an odd duck.