August 29, 2024 • 49 mins
On this episode of The Middle, we explore the subject of a new documentary film called "War Game." The filmmakers, along with the Vet Voice Foundation, gathered former military and political leaders from the last five presidential administrations together to simulate another January 6th-style event, only much worse, because there’s a split in loyalty within the military.
The film premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, where Jeremy Hobson interviewed many people involved in the film: directors Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber, Janessa Goldbeck, CEO of the Vet Voice Foundation, former Montana Governor Steve Bullock, former North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Army Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Alexander Vindman, former Trump Administration Department of Homeland Security Advisor Elizabeth Neumann, Major General (Ret.) Linda Singh, and Marine Corps Veteran and investigative journalist Chris Jones.
This episode originally aired on February 16th, 2024.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
We are now just two months away from a presidential
election that will hit Vice President Kamala Harris against former
President Donald Trump. But it's worth noting that the former
president has never conceded after losing the last election. The
transfer of power happened just weeks after the US capital
was stormed on January sixth, twenty twenty one, as Congress
was preparing to certify the results of the election. So
(00:29):
what if something like that were to happen again, No concession,
claims of fraud, an attack on the Capitol, but this
time a split in military allegiances as well. That's the
topic of the new documentary film Wargame, which was released
in theaters this month. In it, a number of former
military and government officials played different parts in a real
(00:50):
time simulation of a January sixth style disruption.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Mister President, I do think is going to potentially escalate.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Rapid if we over react. I think it's going to
come back and it'll haunt your entire presidency. But we
want to be ready if we need to react.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
My understanding is they've already breached to the point of
being trespassers. I think that what you need, mister President,
with all due deference to the secretary, and I completely
understand what you're saying. I think what the public saw
in twenty twenty one was underreaction. I don't think anyone
is anticipating we need the full strength of the military,
(01:29):
but we have to respond so we don't have a
repeat of what happened in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Since the film's debut at the Sundance Film Festival earlier
this year, a number of things have happened that make
it even more relevant. In March, the Supreme Court ruled
that states cannot bar Trump from the ballot over his
involvement in the events of January sixth. The court later
ruled that presidents have substantial immunity from prosecution for official acts. Then,
(01:55):
last month, Trump survived an assassination attempt that ratcheted up
fears of political violence and escalation. So to the new
documentary War Game, which puts a number of former military
and political leaders in a simulation about another January sixth.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
They all play different roles.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Former Montana Governor Steve Bullock plays the president who has
just won a close election, but his rival says the
election was a fraud. Former North Dakota Senator Heidi Hidekamp
is the president's senior advisor and so on. The film
was directed by Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss and was
the brainchild of the Vet Voice Foundation, who CEO, Jenessa Goldbeck,
is a Marine Corps veteran herself. I started our conversation
(02:34):
at the Sundance Film Festival by asking Goldbeck where the
idea for wargame came from.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
We had three retired generals Pennanopped and the Washington Post
after January sixth, twenty twenty one, and they were all
advisors to our foundation. We are a national, nonpartisan organization
that represents over a million and a half veterans and
military families across the country. And one of their recommendations
was for the administration to do an exercise like this.
This is a very standard way of training in the military,
(03:02):
to do an exercise where you game out situations and
vulnerabilities that you could be exposed to. And we realized
we had the network to put on an exercise like
this ourselves, to do it in a nonpartisan manner, to
involve administration officials from the last five presidential administrations from
both parties, people who are deeply concerned because the reality
is that, as I said in the clip, the alarms
(03:23):
are flashing red. There is an increasing amount of extremism
in this country. And the military is a microcosm of
our society. So when you have folks who are well trained,
who understand how to seed violence and create discord and division,
and they also have military training, it becomes an extremely
challenging and frightening scenario. So we really wanted to see
(03:46):
what happens if there's another contested election. But this time
rogue elements of the military participated.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
And I said, you're a Marine Corps veteran. Is there
something in your background that you saw people that you
thought maybe they would go rogue in this way or
is this just something that a fear that existed.
Speaker 5 (04:02):
Well, we know that military veterans were overrepresented in the
folks who participated in the insurrection on January sixth. We
know that extremism is a rising problem in our active
duty forces. There have been multiple studies that examine this issue.
You know, when you're serving in the military, you're serving
in a nonpartisan manner. You may have your own political
beliefs and values. That's one of the great beauties of
(04:25):
the institution is that people from all walks of life
can come together and achieve a common cause. But when
we have these elements in our society that are now
believing that actually committing violence and trying to overthrow the
duly elected US government is patriotic, that's a pretty big
challenge for us to tackle. And I think the military
(04:46):
has acknowledged that it is an issue, but there are
many things that they still could do.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Jesse Moss, you're one of the directors and a producer
as well.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Why make this into a film? Who is it for?
Speaker 6 (04:56):
Well, first and foremost to confront questions that I have.
That's where start as a filmmaker. How do I make
sense of what happened on January six and what is
our political future? Bringing together these experienced public servants, they
were asked to improvise their roles and their words based
on their lived experience, and that was the exciting combination
(05:17):
that we saw. This was documentary, live, improvisational theater, dystopian
science fiction, and political thriller all at once. And what
kind of film would it be? What kind of story
could we tell? And could we invite people to a
conversation about what we all care about, which is our country,
our institutions, our values.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Tony Gerber, you're also a director of this film.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
The issue of how to portray January six has become
very polarizing. Was it an insurrection? Was it a rebellion?
Was it an event?
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Was it, as Donald Trump says, a tourist visit gone wrong.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
He's now referring, though, to people who were convicted as
hostages January six hostages. How do you keep this film
from being seen as political when such a large portion
of this country doesn't even want to think about January
sixth anymore.
Speaker 7 (06:07):
Yeah, that's a good question. Well, I can tell you that,
you know, famously, Francis Ford Coppolas said that a movie
gets written three times, first time in the writing, second
time in the shooting, third time in the editing. In
the case of our documentary, the fourth time will be when.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
It's released into the world.
Speaker 7 (06:23):
Right. But I can tell you that in making this film,
we really leaned away from the potential for the story
of this war game and our film to be spun
by QAnon voices.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
For example.
Speaker 7 (06:37):
You know, it's important that this film brings people together.
It's not a look back at the last January sixth,
it's a look forward, and it's a film that's really
intended not just to remind folks of a potential nightmare,
but to also bring hope right and belief in our
political system and our institutions.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
It is a very different time now, though, than it
was when you made this film. Donald Trump is almost
certain to be the nominee of the Republican Party again
for president. He has said he should be immune from
prosecution even if he crosses a line. He has said
he wants to be a dictator on day one. Do
you think the film should be seen in a different
(07:18):
light now than when you filmed it.
Speaker 6 (07:22):
I wish that it were less relevant in some way.
But it's true that Trump was on the periphery when
we began this project. But we know that the threats
that this exercise in this film confront go beyond one person.
They are a kind of cancer in our country and
a division that you talked about, and now I think that,
regardless of the outcome of the twenty twenty four election,
(07:44):
this is a problem that persists within the military and
the military's role its functioned as this bulwark of our democracy,
something we take for granted is something we have to
talk about to foresee the unforseeable. It's sometimes hard to
look at those things, but we have a responsibility to
and it's our job as filmmakers on it in an
inventive and creative way to bring you to that conversation.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Governor Steve Bullock, you're what I think we could call
a moderate former governor of Montana. What is your sense
of how the average American people in your state view
the events of January sixth and how worried they are
about it today.
Speaker 8 (08:19):
There was a poll nationally that said a quarter of
Americans think that January sixth was incited by the FBI.
You look at it right now, there's one hundred and
seventy one members of Congress, one third representing thirty seven
states that say that are election deniers.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Well, something like sixty six percent of Republicans in the
Iowa Caucus has believed that Biden was not a legitimate president.
Speaker 8 (08:46):
So, yeah, where are we today in Montana? We're all
across the country. We're at a very dangerous point. And
I think the idea of the film isn't to look
backwards is to look forward. The notion that literally twenty
five percent of Americans think the FBI created this in
January sixth is such a challenge that needs to be discussed,
(09:11):
and it doesn't need to be discussed necessarily just in Washington.
C right needs to be discussed in communities all across
red and blue, because this isn't about politics, right, this
is about a country and norms and a rule of
law that we all expect.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
What do you think, Senator Heidihydekemp, You also would be
considered a moderate. You represented North Dakota and the Senate.
Are your neighbors in North Dakota worried about this?
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Should they be?
Speaker 3 (09:37):
No?
Speaker 4 (09:38):
I think that one of the reasons why this film
is so important is denial. The country's in denial, right,
so we deny that it even happened. That was like
a tourism problem that was incited by the FBI. But
these people are hostages, and so there's no consistency in
how we're looking at it, and that's why so important.
(10:01):
We found out that after the January sixth committee hearings
that people started understanding and appreciating because they saw it
on television Prime time, and they watched it and it
reignited the feelings that they felt on January sixth, which
was horror about what was happening in our country. That
(10:21):
then gives it there's a period of gaslighting that goes
on that really wasn't that bad. Those folks are patriots,
blah blah blah. We have to have events like this
movie to remind people. So that's why the movie is important.
The biggest enemy of protection of the democracy is people
saying can never happen again. I'm not saying it's probable
(10:45):
that it could happen again. Is it possible? Absolutely, When
people believe that somehow along the way something has been
taken from them, that there is a rigged system and
they can't even appreciate the fairness of their elections, I
want to make just one point of optimism. I watched
(11:05):
the twenty twenty two midterms holding my breath because a
lot of the people on the ballot were selected by
Donald Trump. And the question was were those people when
they lost, going to deny the election results? All but
one they all conceded. And so that's a bit of optimism.
And so when we create the idea that the norm
(11:27):
has to be established of understanding and realizing that our
elections are fair. They achieve a result that promotes democracy.
But if we deny that, it could happen again. Guess
what we're unprepared for? What could happen?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
That was former North Dakota Senator Heidi Hydekamp speaking with
me as part of a panel at the Sundance Film
Festival in Park City, Utah. She plays the president's senior
advisor in the documentary film Wargame. In just a moment,
we'll hear from more members of the panel, including retired
Army lieutenant colonel and Trump whistleblower Alexander Vindman, about the
(12:05):
issue of a split in military loyalty.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Stay with us.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
More of the middle coming up. This is the middle.
I'm Jeremy Hobson. Over the last several months, we've tackled
(12:29):
a number of topics, from healthcare and the media, to
inflation to the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine. All
of those topics have come up and will come up
in this presidential election year. But the fact that we
vote on those issues and can have a say in
what our government does about them is based on the
idea of a democracy that listens to its citizens and
respects their will at the ballot box. The film Wargame
(12:53):
puts former military and government officials in a simulation in
which there's another January sixth style riot at the US
capital and there are split allegiances in the military. In
one part of the film, Rogue, members of the military
take over McDill Air Force Base in Florida as the
US capital is being attacked. Former Senator Doug Jones, who
(13:13):
plays the Attorney General, alert Steve Bullock, who plays the president.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Mister President, we're picking up intercepted chatter among military that
they're taking what happened at McDill and now they're trying
to spread that to other bases.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
How many soldiers are McDill.
Speaker 9 (13:29):
Twelve that have gone rogue is what I understood, Not
that many. These are twelve, you know, gung ho killers
out there who decided to take it in their own hands.
You got two four star generals down there.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
The concern we're getting is the chatter that this may spread,
and y'all need to be aware of that.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
As we continued our conversation at the Sundance Film Festival
in Utah, I asked retired Army Major General Linda Singh,
who plays the chief of the National Guard Bureau in
the film, how realistic a split in the military is.
Speaker 10 (14:00):
The answer is, you know, the military is a microcosm
and we heard Danesa say that of society. So for
us to think that it could not happen in the military,
then we're putting our heads in the sand. Right, We're
just saying we're definitely in denial. And I think you know,
what we have to pay attention to is that, you know,
we recruit from everywhere in the country, and so if
(14:22):
we're bringing in individuals that come from all walks of life,
you have to understand that we're going to get individuals
in the forces that will represent things that we wouldn't
see just bringing them in from an enlisted perspective, right
when we bring them in to the door. And so
even you know, when I think about, you know, how
we have this exercise and how things were playing out.
(14:43):
You know, I was at the forefront of the civil
disturbance in Baltimore. We talked about this very issue. We
talked about what was going on across the country. So
to think that you know, it's not going to happen
that it doesn't exist. I think that we're missing the point.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
What happens when that does happen? Is there?
Speaker 2 (14:59):
How is that dealt with? When there's when you find
out that somebody is being disloyal in the military.
Speaker 10 (15:04):
Well, I mean, you know, first off, we do have
systems in place. But this is where true leadership has
to come into place, right, I mean, this is not
about you know, oh, I have to protect my soldiers,
I have to protect my airmen. No, this is where
true leadership comes into place, and leaders within the organization
you need to tamp down on that very quickly. If
you don't tamp down on it and deal with it,
(15:25):
then it is going to be pervasive and it will
ruin just the overall kind of togetherness, teamwork, everything within
the organization. And so what I think is really really
challenging is sometimes leaders are afraid to tamp down on
it because I want to get my recruitment numbers. And
we have to say, okay, are we going to let
this actually run rampant through our organization or are we
(15:46):
going to worry about recruitment numbers?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
So is that a bigger problem?
Speaker 11 (15:50):
Now?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Is there a bigger problem with recruitment so people are
being brought in that may be a problem down the road.
Speaker 10 (15:55):
I think it's a bigger problem now because we've not
only seen where they're allowed to be able to kind
of share this voice and show up in places where
they shouldn't even in uniform, right, but even through the pandemic,
we've watched uniform members say well, I'm not going to
get a vaccine.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 10 (16:09):
The military is the most vaccinated force there is, which
you're not going to get a vaccine. And so I
think that we're seeing it more and more now, and
we need to deal with how are we going to recruit,
how are we going to retain, and how are.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
We going to discipline?
Speaker 10 (16:24):
And we can't be afraid.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
To kind of talk about those things.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
But of course, in this film and in this exercise,
it all has to be done very very quickly. You
don't have a long time to figure that out. Alex Vinman,
you are a retired Army lieutenant colonel who was director
for European Affairs for the National Security Council. Do you
think that any sort of coup style split is likely
in today's climate?
Speaker 12 (16:47):
So I think we came up with a scenario that
we thought was about as realistic as you can get.
If we look at the numbers of folks that were
pushed out of the military for refusing to take their vaccinations,
there were four thousand of those. Another portion that ended
up taking the vaccines, but they were very reluctant about
it and have now have hard feelings and are probably
(17:07):
further radicalized than they were four years ago when this
first unfolded. I think the fact is that it doesn't
really take a huge number of military to cause chaos.
We looked mainly at national guard units, reserves, folks that
are really part of the tapestry of their societies more
so than the folks that are active duty day to day.
Serving in that kind of environment between law enforcement, reserves,
(17:29):
national guard, I think there is a real possibility of
radicalized elements coming up in states and attempting to interfere
with certification of elections, and then even I think within
the national the active duty force, that's a threat.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Now.
Speaker 12 (17:43):
I am a big believer in the values army values
and the integrity of the military, and the vast majority
will live up to their obligations ninety seven, ninety eight,
ninety nine percent will do that, But it doesn't really
take a huge amount, and we need to be prepared
for it. That's why this wargame was so critically important
to to harden us for a future scenario.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Is it about the information that they're getting? I mean,
is it just about disinformation? Misinformation that is making them,
when they've decided to go into a career in the military,
be disloyal to the constitution.
Speaker 12 (18:16):
So that's that's why I think this may be at
least my perception is that this is a bigger threat
in the National Guard and the Reserve, where you're not
your day in, day out life is not within the
institution of the military, which does have kind of a moderating,
kind of homogenizing effect. You don't get as many radicals
coming out of that segment. There are, but just maybe
(18:38):
not as money. Now, the folks that do this on
a less habitual basis, they're part of the they're communities
that are radicalized, They're part of the information loops that
are being targeted by the MAGA movement by foreign empties
on a day to day basis and don't have that
moderating force from the rest of the Malti carry. Those
(19:01):
folks are just susceptible and from my standpoint, producing something
like wargame, the exercise that we did, the reports that
we wrote, sharing that with the government is important, but
it's frankly much more important to be able to share
this with society at large, not just the interested parties
in Washington, d C. But frankly with the rest of
(19:21):
the country that may have different perceptions and needs to
be alert to these threats.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
A lot of our listeners know who you are.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
You were seen as a hero by many when you
blew the whistle on former President Trump and his phone
call to the Ukrainian president. You've now been vilified on
the right. You are an actual victim of this polarization
in this country. How did that play into your experience
in doing this wargame?
Speaker 12 (19:47):
So I've been part of the Voice Foundation and Vote
Vets really just about since the moment I left the
military service, and the reason I made that decision in
the first place is it was in uniform, on active duty,
I was vilified and demonized by the Trump administration and
the far right, and I couldn't really do anything because
in the military, I'm bound by the uniform Code of
(20:09):
Military Justice. I couldn't defend myself. Once I was forced
out by the Trump administration, the gloves were off and
they did that to themselves. So immediately I took the
opportunity to punch back. I wrote about my experiences with
the Trump administration. My wife and I had ended up
participating in some ads indicating the threat that Donald Trump
(20:32):
poses to our democracy. Tried to be impactful in twenty twenty,
and I see it as a commitment to make sure
that other public servants are not demonized and ulified the
way I am. And I've been given a voice and
I'm going to use it in a constructive way.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
So simple, Chris Jones, you are also a former marine.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
You actually placed someone in this film who is not
loyal to the Constitution. Let's take a listen to another
clip from the film and talk about it on the
other side.
Speaker 13 (21:07):
A new video has been released on social media by
the heads of the so called Order of Columbus, the
extremist group which has a long challenged the legitimacy of
the US government. Retired Army Lieutenant General Roger Simms, who
the Order refers to as the Patriarch, is claiming to
have evidence of a stolen election and the group is
(21:27):
backing those members of the military who have appeared to
have gone rogue. Now, this video was released just a
short time ago. We're going to play it for you.
A word of warning, some of what you'll hear is disturbing.
Speaker 14 (21:40):
We have undertaken an extensive investigation of the twenty twenty
four election, and it is Hatham who is attempting a
coup to consolidate his illegitimate power and eliminate our god
given freedoms.
Speaker 15 (21:55):
So the Red Cell is motivated not just by a
failed candidate trying to steal the presidency, but also by
a religious figure, someone with military experience who comes with
a lot of credibility, like former General Michael Flint, a
convicted felon who spent his career fighting against insurgencies. It
(22:20):
is not unrealistic that figures like him it could play
roles in an attack.
Speaker 16 (22:26):
Those of you who are feeling weak tonight, those of
you that don't have an all fire in your body,
get some tonight, because tomorrow wee the people are gonna
be here, and we want you to know that we
will not stand for a lie. We will not stand
for a lie.
Speaker 15 (22:44):
A figure like that can be used to help recruit
Americans into a belief system that justifies violence against other
Americans to achieve political goals, which is the definition of terrority.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Chris Jones, give our audience a sense of your role
in this and the Red Cell and what that is.
Speaker 17 (23:08):
The guy you saw talking, Chris Goldsmith, was leading myself
and two other folks. And you know, when when we
first got involved with this, the thing he had us
set out to do was, you know, we look at
the far right full time. We do a lot of work,
you know, investigating and interdiction stuff, and so we just
had this massive body of evidence of all these ingredients
that you could use that that already exist. And so
(23:30):
you know a lot of our prep for this was
literally going through every single you know, not just organizations,
but but you know, mechanical things that you would need
to conduct the types of attacks that happened in the
war game, you know, and show that like we're not.
There's very little imagination involved in our preparation for this.
It was you know, this already exists, this sentiment already exists,
(23:50):
these organizations already exist, and then our job was really
to you know, not just play out these things occurring
in real time, but you know, generating a lot of misinformation,
disinformation and.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
A lot of it in a very low tech way,
like you're sending out basically the equivalent of a tweet.
Speaker 17 (24:08):
Right right, and there's like a simulated social media space,
and we were you know, when you watch this stuff
in real life, you really kind of unfortunately get a
knack for knowing how to do it yourself. And so yeah,
I mean we had a very low five video editing
software and that was probably the most advanced tool that
we had to use. But you know, we also made
a point to go around to the physical locations and
show that, you know, this isn't you know, a scenario
(24:31):
that someone's cooking up Tom Clancy style. Is like, we
went to this place and showed that this is how
long it would take us to do these things.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
You were actually on Capitol Hill on January sixth, documenting
what was happening.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
What did you see there?
Speaker 8 (24:44):
Oh man?
Speaker 17 (24:45):
I mean, you know, that was like the worst day
of my life in a lot of ways. But I
think the thing that in hindsight really struck me was
that this was, in a lot of ways the perfect
storm of you know, most of the folks were there
who were you know, attacking police journal with all this stuff.
You know, they they're suburban soccer moms and dads, and
(25:06):
the right people had been given a large enough platform,
and the right types of narratives that really emotionally appealed
have been deployed so effectively, and the right financial sources
have been deployed that day to move all of those
people there. That people that if you put a gun
into their hand and said do you want to shoot
the President would say no, whether they've disagree with or not,
(25:27):
We're more than willing to become violent and use that.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Why is that? What did you learn about?
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Not the Proud Boys, but just ordinary people who took
part that day? Broke the windows, went in, or at
least went in after the window was broken, into the Capitol.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Why did they do that?
Speaker 17 (25:46):
You know, I've looked at this stuff long enough and
have been involved in enough other you know, insurgencies and
stuff like that to know that we're not that special,
right that it does not take a lot to turn
somebody who's never done anything violent into part of a
island insurrection. You know, I think that.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
You really saw.
Speaker 17 (26:07):
How close we are, and I think My biggest thing
was that, you know, underneath all of these decisions these
people were making, we're very real. You know, we talk
a lot about real and perceived grievances. There is something
that these people were legitimately upset about.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
And the only media or.
Speaker 17 (26:23):
You know, social way to engage with those things, in
political ways, to engage with those things that they felt
they had access to, was waiting for the President to say,
go to the Capitol and tear it down.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Elizabeth Newman lety bring you you in you.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
You served in the Trump administration as Assistant Secretary for
counter Terrorism and Threat Prevention in the Department of Homeland Security.
You've got a new book out called Kingdom of Rage,
The Rise of Christian Extremism. In the Path Back to Peace,
you raised alarms about the threat of domestic terrorism.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
What is the root cause of it? Do you think?
Speaker 11 (26:56):
So that would take much longer than we have time for.
But in a nutshell, our country has dealt with domestic
terrorism probably since our founding. There's an argument to be
had that even the Revolution checks some of the boxes, right.
This terrorism is one form of extremism. Extremism the definition
(27:17):
I use is when an in group perceives that their
success or survival is threatened by an outgroup and hostile
action is necessary. It's that hostile action piece that becomes
so critical to your definition because your in group outgroup
success or survival piece is very normal in our politics.
(27:39):
The other side, this is the most consequential election of
our lifetime. If so and so gets elected, it's the
end of the United States as we know it. I mean,
we're just so used to it, so that such that
when we had an election in twenty twenty and now
again in twenty twenty four, when you have people like
Colonel Vinman saying no, really, it's hard for us to
(28:03):
even hear that. This is different than those other political
speeches you've heard in the past. But the difference is
the hostile action piece. That we have individuals in our
country who perceive that threat so significantly that they're willing
to commit some form of hostile action. On the spectrum
of hostile action, we start down at the bullying harassment stage.
(28:28):
Might be non criminals, so the government's not allowed to
go and police that. But from a community standpoint, we
can as parents, we can as educators, we can we
can say stop it. That's not how we deal with
our conflict, but that can pretty quickly escalate into criminal action,
actual vandalism of property, actual intimidation and threats of an
(28:50):
individual or an organization, and then you get into hate crimes, terrorism,
genocide being the extreme end of that spectrum. And I
think been living in a soup, a toxic soup of
extremist rhetoric for a long time as a country, and
then a permission structure was created some point in the
last ten years that you can take those ideas that yeah,
(29:16):
violence is appropriate sometimes and actually start acting on them.
And to have that permission structure, you need a couple
of factors. It's at any given time in our population,
there are going to be any number of individuals that
we would describe as vulnerable to radicalization, but the percentage
(29:39):
that actually radicalized is much much smaller, and the percentage
that actually mobilized to violence is much much much smaller
than that. But in recent years that vulnerable population has
swelled and is huge the poles. The surveys done by
multiple different outfits academics, anywhere from twenty five percent to
(30:02):
forty percent of the American public believe that violence is
justified to achieve your political aim. That is the definition
of terrorism. Now, if you were to ask somebody that
do you think terrorism is justified? Of course they'd say now,
But when you ask it in kind of this other language,
they start to admit, yeah, yeah, I think that's possible.
And so we're in a tinderbox right now.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
That was former Trump administration Homeland Security official Elizabeth Newman.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
In a moment, we'll.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Continue our conversation about the documentary film Wargame and talk
about one of the most powerful but also dangerous tools
in the president's toolbox, the Insurrection Act, a law from
the seventeen nineties that allows the president to use the
military against Americans on US soil. More of our conversation
from Sundance coming up on the middle.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Let's continue our conversation from the Sundance Film Festival in
Utah about the new documentary film Wargame. In it, a
host of elected leaders and military officials had to react
in real time to a January sixth style event, but
worse because there was a split in military loyalty. Some
in the armed forces believe that the loser of the
election was actually the winner. Former Montana Governor Steve Bullet
(31:30):
plays the president, and I asked him who he.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Believed the enemy was in a situation like that.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Was it the ordinary citizen breaking into the capital, the
radicalized blogger sending out orders online, or the Michael Flynn
esque former general telling members of the military to disobey
orders from their commander in chief.
Speaker 8 (31:50):
I don't know that. I was thinking, who am I
fighting against? But what are we fighting for?
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Right that?
Speaker 8 (31:56):
At the end of the day, and we even talked
about some in the movie. You have what happened on
the January sixth, but what's going to happen the day after?
I think Elizabeth talk about the in group and the outgroup,
and look, we all many people would want to say
Trump cost all this.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I don't believe that.
Speaker 8 (32:14):
I think Trump was the result. Two thousand and six
twenty sixteen, eighty percent of household saw their income stay
flat or go down. People start thinking, Okay, I do
the right thing. I'm going to live that dream, whatever
that is, and when it's not getting there, that's how
you get the potential for more radicalization. So I looked
(32:36):
at it, certainly at a micro level, right that Here's
what's happened in Arizona, Here's what's happened in vill Air
Force Base. Here's what the Red Cell might be doing.
But as we tried to get a hold of the situation,
the premise behind it is that the election was decided
by six tens a one percent, But it was never oh,
(32:59):
that forty nine point four percent of people are bad.
It wasn't about the politics. It was about sort of
the institutions, and then how do we start bridging those
institutions once you get control of the situation.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Elizabeth, what was the scariest thing that came up in
this exercise that you think we need to be worried
about as we had into this coming election.
Speaker 11 (33:22):
Well, the game designers and the Red Cell were pretty realistic,
at least in my understanding of the nature of the threat,
and they took advantage of I don't want to call
them design flaws. It's just that so many of so
much of the way that our government functions is based
on norms. It's not written into law, it's not written
into policy, and we've experienced in the last eight years
(33:47):
what happens if somebody says I don't want to live
by those norms, and there are consequences if we as
a society decide whether it's down at a low level
somebody getting up with the fast food worker and deciding
that violence is the response. You know, that's a norm
violation all the way up to a president saying I
(34:09):
don't have to follow the rules, I am immune to
the laws. That those have consequences. So I think the
while there were many good outcomes of the exercise, and
you'll have to go see the film to learn more
about them, I was still left with this pit in
(34:30):
my stomach that there are a lot of policy questions
left unanswered. There are a lot of places that we
both in the government and then as a community, we
need to be wrestling with this and coming up with
answers before it happens. If you're dealing with it on
the day of and you don't know what your playbook is,
(34:51):
you're most likely going to lose, or in the way
that I view it, you're most likely going to lose life.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
Can I add something to society comment? Though, I mean,
he's right about economic disenfranchisement, but people have, and let's
just admit it, they have made fear of the other
American the American that doesn't look like you. That person's
getting ahead, that person's taking something from you, and those
(35:19):
people are for that person, and I'm for you. And
in a way that we've never seen, at least in
my lifetime, people who would expouse those beliefs, whether they
are white supremacists, have been invited to the party because
they are a critical piece of a voting block right now,
(35:40):
and that's something that needs to be extinguished. And so
we can't leave just the oververt racism of what's happening
in this country out of our discussion.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
We have one more clip that gets to something that
is really fascinating in this film, really the crux of
the film.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
There is a tool the president has.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
It's fully legal, also comes with a lot of consequences.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
It's called the Insurrection Act.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
It was passed in seventeen ninety two, and it gives
the President of the United States the power to use
the military against civilians on US soil in certain circumstances.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Listen to this.
Speaker 17 (36:19):
This is going to be a defining moment of your presidency.
Speaker 9 (36:21):
So the media sports and we have to understand why
they will want to give command and control.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
We do the.
Speaker 9 (36:30):
President the in Direction Act is a trap.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
We need to have a further converssy.
Speaker 9 (36:34):
It's a defining moment in their governors show.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Then we have what President, Your audience is the American public,
and they want to know that Congress is coming back
to certify.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
So we do have to come into agreement here. Because
time is moving on. You have to decide which way
you are going to want to move. Just President, ten
minutes remaining.
Speaker 5 (36:58):
The President is sweaty.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
He's going to have to make a decision.
Speaker 7 (37:03):
Mister President, are you invoking the Insurrection Act or federalizing
National Guard?
Speaker 1 (37:06):
What neither has happened yet.
Speaker 8 (37:08):
I'm not asking you, I'm asking the President.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
Are you doing either?
Speaker 11 (37:22):
Missident President?
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Mister President, President, President Governor Bullock, Mister President, easy day,
wasn't it? Did it make you wonder whether you really
wanted to run for president back in the day? What
was going through your mind as you were considering whether
to invoke the Insurrection Act?
Speaker 8 (37:40):
Well, first, a lot of voices, as you could say,
I mean Jack had said at some point the fog of.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
War, and you didn't have all of the information along
the way.
Speaker 8 (37:50):
As a governor, you're the commander in chief of your
National Guard had got to work with folks like General
say on a regular basis, but try to get a
hold in control of the situation while recognizing that like, look,
that's the nuclear option when you're sending in US military
(38:12):
against your own citizens when half of the country didn't
even think you were properly elected. Like, once you go there,
you can't put that back in the bottle. So it
was both thinking about how do you control the situation
and then what do we do the next day to
start hopefully healing this country.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Heidi Hidekamp, you're a senior advisor to the president. What
were you weighing as you thought about how to advise
him on whether to use the Insurrection Act?
Speaker 4 (38:43):
I think when you are trying to defend democracy and
you take the most extreme power that government has, which
would have been the Insurrection Act, basically declaring military law,
then you need to think about whether you're actually defending
democracy or whether you're just taking an easy way out.
And the other thing is, and you will see it
(39:05):
when you see the movie. We had incomplete information on
whether the governors were actually deploying the resources that they
already had at their ready, which is realistic.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Probably what would actually.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
Happen, absolutely, and we kept saying, get the governor on
the phone. You know, we're trying to trying to parse
through that whole system. And the interesting thing about this
exercise is Steve and I both come from state government.
We were both attorneys general. That's really where my heart is.
Even though I served in the Senate, I see myself
(39:41):
more as a state official, and I think we looked
at this through a lens of state government and state
responsibility in each one of these locations and the value
of the federalist system, federalism system that we have where
states have that autonomy and so to take that away
from states was another huge factor that led to recommendations
(40:04):
Governor Bullock.
Speaker 8 (40:05):
I guess and without sort of saying how it all ends.
One of the things that I was heartened with through
the exercise too, was like you had incredible military, former
four star generals involved, and you know, and part of
you might think, okay that a four star general would
(40:28):
say everything looks like a nail and we're the hammer.
But how thoughtful they were in providing counsel to us
as well.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
General thing, Yeah, if you were in that situation at
that moment and the President said, we're invoking the Insurrection Act.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
As a person in the military, what do you do?
You just have to do what he says.
Speaker 10 (40:53):
Well, so that is where I have to really stand
on principle, which I think I did in the exercise, right.
I really wanted to make sure that we understood what
that meant. And I think for you know, when you
get a chance to see wargame, I want you to
understand what that really means to you as a citizen.
(41:13):
That means that you're taking someone like us, and you're
asking us to go and fight against our families, our friends,
our aunts, our uncles, our neighbors. That happens abroad. It
doesn't happen here in the US, not anymore. And so
that is a nuclear option that you've got to be
(41:35):
prepared for the consequences when someone pulls that card. It
has long standing, far more consequences than you can imagine.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Alex Vin been.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
It has already been reported that if President Trump were
to win again that he is advisors have said that
he is considering using the Interaction Act on the first
day if they are a mass protests.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Do you think that he would do that?
Speaker 12 (42:04):
I think he'd want to set the conditions for being
able to justify the Insurrection Act. I think, frankly, in
this scenario, I think the Red Cell was doing everything
they could to force the hand of the President and
have him invoke the Insurrection Act and use that as
a justification for widespread violence. I think Donald Trump would
(42:24):
be very eager to launch this kind of situation for
two different reasons. One because he gives him a chance
to seek retribution against his enemies, and two is that
it gives him some justification for holding on to power
doing the thing that he's already declared that he wants
to do, which is to become a dictator for a
single day.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
But as only on day one.
Speaker 12 (42:46):
Yeah, as we understand. If it's if you're a dictator
on day one, then you're a dictator forever until you're removed.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Jesse Moss.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
One of the interesting things that we haven't talked about
is that this was filmed just blocks away from the Capitol.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
What a year after January two years after January sixth?
What was that like?
Speaker 6 (43:07):
I think we have these ghosts that we live with.
They're everywhere. They're in our hearts, our psychees, and the
very hotel where we filmed. It was a hotel that
insurrectionists stayed in on January sixth. It's the hotel we
reclaimed for democracy. That's how I like to think about it.
I think the exercise exhuoms ghosts and allows us to
look at them and confront our fears, but in what
(43:29):
I think is not an inflammatory and frightening way. A
little bit frightening, but I think in a constructive way,
because it's all of these people who I think want
to protect and defend democracy, and so I think we
do confront those ghosts, but in a very cathartic way.
We need to do that.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
Tony Gribber, what do you want an ordinary person who
sees this film to take away from?
Speaker 1 (43:53):
What are they supposed to do with this information?
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Obviously, if you were to play this in a room
in Washington with policymakers or people in the mid military, better.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Think about this, better be careful of that. But what
about just a regular person.
Speaker 7 (44:06):
Well, you know, the challenge for us was to take
this all in and make a film. So the film
has to provide an emotional journey for its audience, right,
that was important, and it has to deploy empathy because
if an audience doesn't feel anything, they're never moved to action, right,
So they had to care about all these people. They
had to feel what it would be like to be
(44:27):
sitting at that table, to be in President Hawtham's shoes
weighing the consequences of making these decisions. So it's my
hope that we have a beautiful broad theatrical release followed
by a really healthy life on a streaming platform, and
that people can see this movie with community right, they
(44:48):
can sit in a movie theater next to other people
and feel the community, right, and that the film sparks conversation,
and it's not a monolith, right, It's not suppress of
different points of view, it's a launching point.
Speaker 6 (45:04):
I think there's probably a lot of disagreement on this
stage about particular political issues, and you know, we come
from all different perspectives on the spectrum, but I think
we do have common concerns and values. And I think
that's what I saw in what Chanessa organized and the
different backgrounds of the people involved in this that I
wanted to be a part of, to witness, to try
to capture because I think that's a powerful lesson for
(45:25):
all of us.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
Alex Finman.
Speaker 12 (45:27):
Yeah, so I think this is going to actually tap
into a zeitgeist of the moment. Unfortunately, we're now in
the world where American public, large swaths of the American
public have woken up to the dangers, have shaken off
complacency about the security of our democracy. I think that
played out in the way elections unfolded in twenty twenty,
(45:48):
twenty twenty two, this off cycle election in twenty twenty three,
people are voting on the basis of preserving democracy, and
I think this film is going to strike at a
moment where one six is still fresh in people's minds.
We're coming up on a presidential election, and people can
reflect on the fact that we're still in harm's way,
We're still in danger, and we need to we need
to take charge of our democracy, vote accordingly to preserve
(46:10):
our form of government.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
Elizabeth Newman, do you think that the lessons have been
learned in Washington to be prepared for what's what could happen.
Speaker 11 (46:19):
Washington is having a hard time getting anything done right now,
So I had hope that we might see some laws
passed to address everything from the vulnerability is demonstrated on
January sixth to our domestic terrorism architecture, which a whole
other conversation, but is woefully equipped when you compare how
(46:44):
we're able to go after international terrorism. So there's vulnerabilities
in our structure that have not been fixed. I do
think that the Executive Branch is much more attuned to
domestic terear. They've done a lot of work to better
understand it, to better use the tools that we do
(47:05):
have to go after domestic terrorists.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
But it is.
Speaker 11 (47:08):
Really fraught for the federal government to try to address
this mass political violence problem we have. That it goes
to what the governor mentioned. When the federal government does something,
it is perceived as the Democrats are doing something to
(47:30):
the Republicans. It is blue state against red state, even
if the civil servants in the executive Branch many of
them are Republican and conservative, but we see demonization of
our law enforcement agencies. We see accusations that the Department
(47:50):
of Justice has been politicized to go after political enemies.
So that's the operating space that the Executive branch is
in right now. Damned if you do, damned I don't.
And so they're doing the best they can, but they
recognize that if they overstep, it actually makes a problem worse.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
That was former Trump Administration Homeland Security official Elizabeth Newman,
one of the participants in the new documentary film Wargame,
which was released in theaters this month. We'll link you
to more about the film and how you can see
it at Listen to the Middle dot com.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
It's in select.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Theaters now and we'll be available on demand in the
coming weeks. Next week, we're back with another live show
where we'll focus on the issues important to younger voters.
This selection, but it's get so many calls from young people.
So if you're out there and you're under let's say forty,
call eight.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
Four four four Middle.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
That's eight four four four six four three three five
three anytime and leave us a message, or you can
call in live next week. The Middle is brought to
you by LONGNOK Media, distributed by Illinois Public Media in Urbana, Illinois,
and produced by Joeann Jennings, Harrison Patino, John Barth, and
Danny Alexander. Our technical director is Jason Croft.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Our theme music was composed by Andrew Haik.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
Thanks also to Nashville Public Radio, iHeartMedia, and the more
than four hundred and ten public radio stations that are
making it possible for people across the country to listen
to the Middle I'm Jeremy Hobson. Talk to you next week.
Welcome to the middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
We are now just two months away from a presidential
election that will hit Vice President Kamala Harris against former
President Donald Trump. But it's worth noting that the former
president has never conceded after losing the last election. The
transfer of power happened just weeks after the US capital
was stormed on January sixth, twenty twenty one, as Congress
was preparing to certify the results of the election. So
(00:29):
what if something like that were to happen again, No concession,
claims of fraud, an attack on the Capitol, but this
time a split in military allegiances as well. That's the
topic of the new documentary film Wargame, which was released
in theaters this month. In it, a number of former
military and government officials played different parts in a real
(00:50):
time simulation of a January sixth style disruption.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Mister President, I do think is going to potentially escalate.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Rapid if we over react. I think it's going to
come back and it'll haunt your entire presidency. But we
want to be ready if we need to react.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
My understanding is they've already breached to the point of
being trespassers. I think that what you need, mister President,
with all due deference to the secretary, and I completely
understand what you're saying. I think what the public saw
in twenty twenty one was underreaction. I don't think anyone
is anticipating we need the full strength of the military,
(01:29):
but we have to respond so we don't have a
repeat of what happened in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Since the film's debut at the Sundance Film Festival earlier
this year, a number of things have happened that make
it even more relevant. In March, the Supreme Court ruled
that states cannot bar Trump from the ballot over his
involvement in the events of January sixth. The court later
ruled that presidents have substantial immunity from prosecution for official acts. Then,
(01:55):
last month, Trump survived an assassination attempt that ratcheted up
fears of political violence and escalation. So to the new
documentary War Game, which puts a number of former military
and political leaders in a simulation about another January sixth.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
They all play different roles.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Former Montana Governor Steve Bullock plays the president who has
just won a close election, but his rival says the
election was a fraud. Former North Dakota Senator Heidi Hidekamp
is the president's senior advisor and so on. The film
was directed by Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss and was
the brainchild of the Vet Voice Foundation, who CEO, Jenessa Goldbeck,
is a Marine Corps veteran herself. I started our conversation
(02:34):
at the Sundance Film Festival by asking Goldbeck where the
idea for wargame came from.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
We had three retired generals Pennanopped and the Washington Post
after January sixth, twenty twenty one, and they were all
advisors to our foundation. We are a national, nonpartisan organization
that represents over a million and a half veterans and
military families across the country. And one of their recommendations
was for the administration to do an exercise like this.
This is a very standard way of training in the military,
(03:02):
to do an exercise where you game out situations and
vulnerabilities that you could be exposed to. And we realized
we had the network to put on an exercise like
this ourselves, to do it in a nonpartisan manner, to
involve administration officials from the last five presidential administrations from
both parties, people who are deeply concerned because the reality
is that, as I said in the clip, the alarms
(03:23):
are flashing red. There is an increasing amount of extremism
in this country. And the military is a microcosm of
our society. So when you have folks who are well trained,
who understand how to seed violence and create discord and division,
and they also have military training, it becomes an extremely
challenging and frightening scenario. So we really wanted to see
(03:46):
what happens if there's another contested election. But this time
rogue elements of the military participated.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
And I said, you're a Marine Corps veteran. Is there
something in your background that you saw people that you
thought maybe they would go rogue in this way or
is this just something that a fear that existed.
Speaker 5 (04:02):
Well, we know that military veterans were overrepresented in the
folks who participated in the insurrection on January sixth. We
know that extremism is a rising problem in our active
duty forces. There have been multiple studies that examine this issue.
You know, when you're serving in the military, you're serving
in a nonpartisan manner. You may have your own political
beliefs and values. That's one of the great beauties of
(04:25):
the institution is that people from all walks of life
can come together and achieve a common cause. But when
we have these elements in our society that are now
believing that actually committing violence and trying to overthrow the
duly elected US government is patriotic, that's a pretty big
challenge for us to tackle. And I think the military
(04:46):
has acknowledged that it is an issue, but there are
many things that they still could do.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Jesse Moss, you're one of the directors and a producer
as well.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Why make this into a film? Who is it for?
Speaker 6 (04:56):
Well, first and foremost to confront questions that I have.
That's where start as a filmmaker. How do I make
sense of what happened on January six and what is
our political future? Bringing together these experienced public servants, they
were asked to improvise their roles and their words based
on their lived experience, and that was the exciting combination
(05:17):
that we saw. This was documentary, live, improvisational theater, dystopian
science fiction, and political thriller all at once. And what
kind of film would it be? What kind of story
could we tell? And could we invite people to a
conversation about what we all care about, which is our country,
our institutions, our values.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Tony Gerber, you're also a director of this film.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
The issue of how to portray January six has become
very polarizing. Was it an insurrection? Was it a rebellion?
Was it an event?
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Was it, as Donald Trump says, a tourist visit gone wrong.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
He's now referring, though, to people who were convicted as
hostages January six hostages. How do you keep this film
from being seen as political when such a large portion
of this country doesn't even want to think about January
sixth anymore.
Speaker 7 (06:07):
Yeah, that's a good question. Well, I can tell you that,
you know, famously, Francis Ford Coppolas said that a movie
gets written three times, first time in the writing, second
time in the shooting, third time in the editing. In
the case of our documentary, the fourth time will be when.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
It's released into the world.
Speaker 7 (06:23):
Right. But I can tell you that in making this film,
we really leaned away from the potential for the story
of this war game and our film to be spun
by QAnon voices.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
For example.
Speaker 7 (06:37):
You know, it's important that this film brings people together.
It's not a look back at the last January sixth,
it's a look forward, and it's a film that's really
intended not just to remind folks of a potential nightmare,
but to also bring hope right and belief in our
political system and our institutions.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
It is a very different time now, though, than it
was when you made this film. Donald Trump is almost
certain to be the nominee of the Republican Party again
for president. He has said he should be immune from
prosecution even if he crosses a line. He has said
he wants to be a dictator on day one. Do
you think the film should be seen in a different
(07:18):
light now than when you filmed it.
Speaker 6 (07:22):
I wish that it were less relevant in some way.
But it's true that Trump was on the periphery when
we began this project. But we know that the threats
that this exercise in this film confront go beyond one person.
They are a kind of cancer in our country and
a division that you talked about, and now I think that,
regardless of the outcome of the twenty twenty four election,
(07:44):
this is a problem that persists within the military and
the military's role its functioned as this bulwark of our democracy,
something we take for granted is something we have to
talk about to foresee the unforseeable. It's sometimes hard to
look at those things, but we have a responsibility to
and it's our job as filmmakers on it in an
inventive and creative way to bring you to that conversation.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Governor Steve Bullock, you're what I think we could call
a moderate former governor of Montana. What is your sense
of how the average American people in your state view
the events of January sixth and how worried they are
about it today.
Speaker 8 (08:19):
There was a poll nationally that said a quarter of
Americans think that January sixth was incited by the FBI.
You look at it right now, there's one hundred and
seventy one members of Congress, one third representing thirty seven
states that say that are election deniers.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Well, something like sixty six percent of Republicans in the
Iowa Caucus has believed that Biden was not a legitimate president.
Speaker 8 (08:46):
So, yeah, where are we today in Montana? We're all
across the country. We're at a very dangerous point. And
I think the idea of the film isn't to look
backwards is to look forward. The notion that literally twenty
five percent of Americans think the FBI created this in
January sixth is such a challenge that needs to be discussed,
(09:11):
and it doesn't need to be discussed necessarily just in Washington.
C right needs to be discussed in communities all across
red and blue, because this isn't about politics, right, this
is about a country and norms and a rule of
law that we all expect.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
What do you think, Senator Heidihydekemp, You also would be
considered a moderate. You represented North Dakota and the Senate.
Are your neighbors in North Dakota worried about this?
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Should they be?
Speaker 3 (09:37):
No?
Speaker 4 (09:38):
I think that one of the reasons why this film
is so important is denial. The country's in denial, right,
so we deny that it even happened. That was like
a tourism problem that was incited by the FBI. But
these people are hostages, and so there's no consistency in
how we're looking at it, and that's why so important.
(10:01):
We found out that after the January sixth committee hearings
that people started understanding and appreciating because they saw it
on television Prime time, and they watched it and it
reignited the feelings that they felt on January sixth, which
was horror about what was happening in our country. That
(10:21):
then gives it there's a period of gaslighting that goes
on that really wasn't that bad. Those folks are patriots,
blah blah blah. We have to have events like this
movie to remind people. So that's why the movie is important.
The biggest enemy of protection of the democracy is people
saying can never happen again. I'm not saying it's probable
(10:45):
that it could happen again. Is it possible? Absolutely, When
people believe that somehow along the way something has been
taken from them, that there is a rigged system and
they can't even appreciate the fairness of their elections, I
want to make just one point of optimism. I watched
(11:05):
the twenty twenty two midterms holding my breath because a
lot of the people on the ballot were selected by
Donald Trump. And the question was were those people when
they lost, going to deny the election results? All but
one they all conceded. And so that's a bit of optimism.
And so when we create the idea that the norm
(11:27):
has to be established of understanding and realizing that our
elections are fair. They achieve a result that promotes democracy.
But if we deny that, it could happen again. Guess
what we're unprepared for? What could happen?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
That was former North Dakota Senator Heidi Hydekamp speaking with
me as part of a panel at the Sundance Film
Festival in Park City, Utah. She plays the president's senior
advisor in the documentary film Wargame. In just a moment,
we'll hear from more members of the panel, including retired
Army lieutenant colonel and Trump whistleblower Alexander Vindman, about the
(12:05):
issue of a split in military loyalty.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Stay with us.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
More of the middle coming up. This is the middle.
I'm Jeremy Hobson. Over the last several months, we've tackled
(12:29):
a number of topics, from healthcare and the media, to
inflation to the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine. All
of those topics have come up and will come up
in this presidential election year. But the fact that we
vote on those issues and can have a say in
what our government does about them is based on the
idea of a democracy that listens to its citizens and
respects their will at the ballot box. The film Wargame
(12:53):
puts former military and government officials in a simulation in
which there's another January sixth style riot at the US
capital and there are split allegiances in the military. In
one part of the film, Rogue, members of the military
take over McDill Air Force Base in Florida as the
US capital is being attacked. Former Senator Doug Jones, who
(13:13):
plays the Attorney General, alert Steve Bullock, who plays the president.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Mister President, we're picking up intercepted chatter among military that
they're taking what happened at McDill and now they're trying
to spread that to other bases.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
How many soldiers are McDill.
Speaker 9 (13:29):
Twelve that have gone rogue is what I understood, Not
that many. These are twelve, you know, gung ho killers
out there who decided to take it in their own hands.
You got two four star generals down there.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
The concern we're getting is the chatter that this may spread,
and y'all need to be aware of that.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
As we continued our conversation at the Sundance Film Festival
in Utah, I asked retired Army Major General Linda Singh,
who plays the chief of the National Guard Bureau in
the film, how realistic a split in the military is.
Speaker 10 (14:00):
The answer is, you know, the military is a microcosm
and we heard Danesa say that of society. So for
us to think that it could not happen in the military,
then we're putting our heads in the sand. Right, We're
just saying we're definitely in denial. And I think you know,
what we have to pay attention to is that, you know,
we recruit from everywhere in the country, and so if
(14:22):
we're bringing in individuals that come from all walks of life,
you have to understand that we're going to get individuals
in the forces that will represent things that we wouldn't
see just bringing them in from an enlisted perspective, right
when we bring them in to the door. And so
even you know, when I think about, you know, how
we have this exercise and how things were playing out.
(14:43):
You know, I was at the forefront of the civil
disturbance in Baltimore. We talked about this very issue. We
talked about what was going on across the country. So
to think that you know, it's not going to happen
that it doesn't exist. I think that we're missing the point.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
What happens when that does happen? Is there?
Speaker 2 (14:59):
How is that dealt with? When there's when you find
out that somebody is being disloyal in the military.
Speaker 10 (15:04):
Well, I mean, you know, first off, we do have
systems in place. But this is where true leadership has
to come into place, right, I mean, this is not
about you know, oh, I have to protect my soldiers,
I have to protect my airmen. No, this is where
true leadership comes into place, and leaders within the organization
you need to tamp down on that very quickly. If
you don't tamp down on it and deal with it,
(15:25):
then it is going to be pervasive and it will
ruin just the overall kind of togetherness, teamwork, everything within
the organization. And so what I think is really really
challenging is sometimes leaders are afraid to tamp down on
it because I want to get my recruitment numbers. And
we have to say, okay, are we going to let
this actually run rampant through our organization or are we
(15:46):
going to worry about recruitment numbers?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
So is that a bigger problem?
Speaker 11 (15:50):
Now?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Is there a bigger problem with recruitment so people are
being brought in that may be a problem down the road.
Speaker 10 (15:55):
I think it's a bigger problem now because we've not
only seen where they're allowed to be able to kind
of share this voice and show up in places where
they shouldn't even in uniform, right, but even through the pandemic,
we've watched uniform members say well, I'm not going to
get a vaccine.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 10 (16:09):
The military is the most vaccinated force there is, which
you're not going to get a vaccine. And so I
think that we're seeing it more and more now, and
we need to deal with how are we going to recruit,
how are we going to retain, and how are.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
We going to discipline?
Speaker 10 (16:24):
And we can't be afraid.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
To kind of talk about those things.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
But of course, in this film and in this exercise,
it all has to be done very very quickly. You
don't have a long time to figure that out. Alex Vinman,
you are a retired Army lieutenant colonel who was director
for European Affairs for the National Security Council. Do you
think that any sort of coup style split is likely
in today's climate?
Speaker 12 (16:47):
So I think we came up with a scenario that
we thought was about as realistic as you can get.
If we look at the numbers of folks that were
pushed out of the military for refusing to take their vaccinations,
there were four thousand of those. Another portion that ended
up taking the vaccines, but they were very reluctant about
it and have now have hard feelings and are probably
(17:07):
further radicalized than they were four years ago when this
first unfolded. I think the fact is that it doesn't
really take a huge number of military to cause chaos.
We looked mainly at national guard units, reserves, folks that
are really part of the tapestry of their societies more
so than the folks that are active duty day to day.
Serving in that kind of environment between law enforcement, reserves,
(17:29):
national guard, I think there is a real possibility of
radicalized elements coming up in states and attempting to interfere
with certification of elections, and then even I think within
the national the active duty force, that's a threat.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Now.
Speaker 12 (17:43):
I am a big believer in the values army values
and the integrity of the military, and the vast majority
will live up to their obligations ninety seven, ninety eight,
ninety nine percent will do that, But it doesn't really
take a huge amount, and we need to be prepared
for it. That's why this wargame was so critically important
to to harden us for a future scenario.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Is it about the information that they're getting? I mean,
is it just about disinformation? Misinformation that is making them,
when they've decided to go into a career in the military,
be disloyal to the constitution.
Speaker 12 (18:16):
So that's that's why I think this may be at
least my perception is that this is a bigger threat
in the National Guard and the Reserve, where you're not
your day in, day out life is not within the
institution of the military, which does have kind of a moderating,
kind of homogenizing effect. You don't get as many radicals
coming out of that segment. There are, but just maybe
(18:38):
not as money. Now, the folks that do this on
a less habitual basis, they're part of the they're communities
that are radicalized, They're part of the information loops that
are being targeted by the MAGA movement by foreign empties
on a day to day basis and don't have that
moderating force from the rest of the Malti carry. Those
(19:01):
folks are just susceptible and from my standpoint, producing something
like wargame, the exercise that we did, the reports that
we wrote, sharing that with the government is important, but
it's frankly much more important to be able to share
this with society at large, not just the interested parties
in Washington, d C. But frankly with the rest of
(19:21):
the country that may have different perceptions and needs to
be alert to these threats.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
A lot of our listeners know who you are.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
You were seen as a hero by many when you
blew the whistle on former President Trump and his phone
call to the Ukrainian president. You've now been vilified on
the right. You are an actual victim of this polarization
in this country. How did that play into your experience
in doing this wargame?
Speaker 12 (19:47):
So I've been part of the Voice Foundation and Vote
Vets really just about since the moment I left the
military service, and the reason I made that decision in
the first place is it was in uniform, on active duty,
I was vilified and demonized by the Trump administration and
the far right, and I couldn't really do anything because
in the military, I'm bound by the uniform Code of
(20:09):
Military Justice. I couldn't defend myself. Once I was forced
out by the Trump administration, the gloves were off and
they did that to themselves. So immediately I took the
opportunity to punch back. I wrote about my experiences with
the Trump administration. My wife and I had ended up
participating in some ads indicating the threat that Donald Trump
(20:32):
poses to our democracy. Tried to be impactful in twenty twenty,
and I see it as a commitment to make sure
that other public servants are not demonized and ulified the
way I am. And I've been given a voice and
I'm going to use it in a constructive way.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
So simple, Chris Jones, you are also a former marine.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
You actually placed someone in this film who is not
loyal to the Constitution. Let's take a listen to another
clip from the film and talk about it on the
other side.
Speaker 13 (21:07):
A new video has been released on social media by
the heads of the so called Order of Columbus, the
extremist group which has a long challenged the legitimacy of
the US government. Retired Army Lieutenant General Roger Simms, who
the Order refers to as the Patriarch, is claiming to
have evidence of a stolen election and the group is
(21:27):
backing those members of the military who have appeared to
have gone rogue. Now, this video was released just a
short time ago. We're going to play it for you.
A word of warning, some of what you'll hear is disturbing.
Speaker 14 (21:40):
We have undertaken an extensive investigation of the twenty twenty
four election, and it is Hatham who is attempting a
coup to consolidate his illegitimate power and eliminate our god
given freedoms.
Speaker 15 (21:55):
So the Red Cell is motivated not just by a
failed candidate trying to steal the presidency, but also by
a religious figure, someone with military experience who comes with
a lot of credibility, like former General Michael Flint, a
convicted felon who spent his career fighting against insurgencies. It
(22:20):
is not unrealistic that figures like him it could play
roles in an attack.
Speaker 16 (22:26):
Those of you who are feeling weak tonight, those of
you that don't have an all fire in your body,
get some tonight, because tomorrow wee the people are gonna
be here, and we want you to know that we
will not stand for a lie. We will not stand
for a lie.
Speaker 15 (22:44):
A figure like that can be used to help recruit
Americans into a belief system that justifies violence against other
Americans to achieve political goals, which is the definition of terrority.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Chris Jones, give our audience a sense of your role
in this and the Red Cell and what that is.
Speaker 17 (23:08):
The guy you saw talking, Chris Goldsmith, was leading myself
and two other folks. And you know, when when we
first got involved with this, the thing he had us
set out to do was, you know, we look at
the far right full time. We do a lot of work,
you know, investigating and interdiction stuff, and so we just
had this massive body of evidence of all these ingredients
that you could use that that already exist. And so
(23:30):
you know a lot of our prep for this was
literally going through every single you know, not just organizations,
but but you know, mechanical things that you would need
to conduct the types of attacks that happened in the
war game, you know, and show that like we're not.
There's very little imagination involved in our preparation for this.
It was you know, this already exists, this sentiment already exists,
(23:50):
these organizations already exist, and then our job was really
to you know, not just play out these things occurring
in real time, but you know, generating a lot of misinformation,
disinformation and.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
A lot of it in a very low tech way,
like you're sending out basically the equivalent of a tweet.
Speaker 17 (24:08):
Right right, and there's like a simulated social media space,
and we were you know, when you watch this stuff
in real life, you really kind of unfortunately get a
knack for knowing how to do it yourself. And so yeah,
I mean we had a very low five video editing
software and that was probably the most advanced tool that
we had to use. But you know, we also made
a point to go around to the physical locations and
show that, you know, this isn't you know, a scenario
(24:31):
that someone's cooking up Tom Clancy style. Is like, we
went to this place and showed that this is how
long it would take us to do these things.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
You were actually on Capitol Hill on January sixth, documenting
what was happening.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
What did you see there?
Speaker 8 (24:44):
Oh man?
Speaker 17 (24:45):
I mean, you know, that was like the worst day
of my life in a lot of ways. But I
think the thing that in hindsight really struck me was
that this was, in a lot of ways the perfect
storm of you know, most of the folks were there
who were you know, attacking police journal with all this stuff.
You know, they they're suburban soccer moms and dads, and
(25:06):
the right people had been given a large enough platform,
and the right types of narratives that really emotionally appealed
have been deployed so effectively, and the right financial sources
have been deployed that day to move all of those
people there. That people that if you put a gun
into their hand and said do you want to shoot
the President would say no, whether they've disagree with or not,
(25:27):
We're more than willing to become violent and use that.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Why is that? What did you learn about?
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Not the Proud Boys, but just ordinary people who took
part that day? Broke the windows, went in, or at
least went in after the window was broken, into the Capitol.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Why did they do that?
Speaker 17 (25:46):
You know, I've looked at this stuff long enough and
have been involved in enough other you know, insurgencies and
stuff like that to know that we're not that special,
right that it does not take a lot to turn
somebody who's never done anything violent into part of a
island insurrection. You know, I think that.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
You really saw.
Speaker 17 (26:07):
How close we are, and I think My biggest thing
was that, you know, underneath all of these decisions these
people were making, we're very real. You know, we talk
a lot about real and perceived grievances. There is something
that these people were legitimately upset about.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
And the only media or.
Speaker 17 (26:23):
You know, social way to engage with those things, in
political ways, to engage with those things that they felt
they had access to, was waiting for the President to say,
go to the Capitol and tear it down.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Elizabeth Newman lety bring you you in you.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
You served in the Trump administration as Assistant Secretary for
counter Terrorism and Threat Prevention in the Department of Homeland Security.
You've got a new book out called Kingdom of Rage,
The Rise of Christian Extremism. In the Path Back to Peace,
you raised alarms about the threat of domestic terrorism.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
What is the root cause of it? Do you think?
Speaker 11 (26:56):
So that would take much longer than we have time for.
But in a nutshell, our country has dealt with domestic
terrorism probably since our founding. There's an argument to be
had that even the Revolution checks some of the boxes, right.
This terrorism is one form of extremism. Extremism the definition
(27:17):
I use is when an in group perceives that their
success or survival is threatened by an outgroup and hostile
action is necessary. It's that hostile action piece that becomes
so critical to your definition because your in group outgroup
success or survival piece is very normal in our politics.
(27:39):
The other side, this is the most consequential election of
our lifetime. If so and so gets elected, it's the
end of the United States as we know it. I mean,
we're just so used to it, so that such that
when we had an election in twenty twenty and now
again in twenty twenty four, when you have people like
Colonel Vinman saying no, really, it's hard for us to
(28:03):
even hear that. This is different than those other political
speeches you've heard in the past. But the difference is
the hostile action piece. That we have individuals in our
country who perceive that threat so significantly that they're willing
to commit some form of hostile action. On the spectrum
of hostile action, we start down at the bullying harassment stage.
(28:28):
Might be non criminals, so the government's not allowed to
go and police that. But from a community standpoint, we
can as parents, we can as educators, we can we
can say stop it. That's not how we deal with
our conflict, but that can pretty quickly escalate into criminal action,
actual vandalism of property, actual intimidation and threats of an
(28:50):
individual or an organization, and then you get into hate crimes, terrorism,
genocide being the extreme end of that spectrum. And I
think been living in a soup, a toxic soup of
extremist rhetoric for a long time as a country, and
then a permission structure was created some point in the
last ten years that you can take those ideas that yeah,
(29:16):
violence is appropriate sometimes and actually start acting on them.
And to have that permission structure, you need a couple
of factors. It's at any given time in our population,
there are going to be any number of individuals that
we would describe as vulnerable to radicalization, but the percentage
(29:39):
that actually radicalized is much much smaller, and the percentage
that actually mobilized to violence is much much much smaller
than that. But in recent years that vulnerable population has
swelled and is huge the poles. The surveys done by
multiple different outfits academics, anywhere from twenty five percent to
(30:02):
forty percent of the American public believe that violence is
justified to achieve your political aim. That is the definition
of terrorism. Now, if you were to ask somebody that
do you think terrorism is justified? Of course they'd say now,
But when you ask it in kind of this other language,
they start to admit, yeah, yeah, I think that's possible.
And so we're in a tinderbox right now.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
That was former Trump administration Homeland Security official Elizabeth Newman.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
In a moment, we'll.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Continue our conversation about the documentary film Wargame and talk
about one of the most powerful but also dangerous tools
in the president's toolbox, the Insurrection Act, a law from
the seventeen nineties that allows the president to use the
military against Americans on US soil. More of our conversation
from Sundance coming up on the middle.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
This is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Let's continue our conversation from the Sundance Film Festival in
Utah about the new documentary film Wargame. In it, a
host of elected leaders and military officials had to react
in real time to a January sixth style event, but
worse because there was a split in military loyalty. Some
in the armed forces believe that the loser of the
election was actually the winner. Former Montana Governor Steve Bullet
(31:30):
plays the president, and I asked him who he.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Believed the enemy was in a situation like that.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Was it the ordinary citizen breaking into the capital, the
radicalized blogger sending out orders online, or the Michael Flynn
esque former general telling members of the military to disobey
orders from their commander in chief.
Speaker 8 (31:50):
I don't know that. I was thinking, who am I
fighting against? But what are we fighting for?
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Right that?
Speaker 8 (31:56):
At the end of the day, and we even talked
about some in the movie. You have what happened on
the January sixth, but what's going to happen the day after?
I think Elizabeth talk about the in group and the outgroup,
and look, we all many people would want to say
Trump cost all this.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I don't believe that.
Speaker 8 (32:14):
I think Trump was the result. Two thousand and six
twenty sixteen, eighty percent of household saw their income stay
flat or go down. People start thinking, Okay, I do
the right thing. I'm going to live that dream, whatever
that is, and when it's not getting there, that's how
you get the potential for more radicalization. So I looked
(32:36):
at it, certainly at a micro level, right that Here's
what's happened in Arizona, Here's what's happened in vill Air
Force Base. Here's what the Red Cell might be doing.
But as we tried to get a hold of the situation,
the premise behind it is that the election was decided
by six tens a one percent, But it was never oh,
(32:59):
that forty nine point four percent of people are bad.
It wasn't about the politics. It was about sort of
the institutions, and then how do we start bridging those
institutions once you get control of the situation.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Elizabeth, what was the scariest thing that came up in
this exercise that you think we need to be worried
about as we had into this coming election.
Speaker 11 (33:22):
Well, the game designers and the Red Cell were pretty realistic,
at least in my understanding of the nature of the threat,
and they took advantage of I don't want to call
them design flaws. It's just that so many of so
much of the way that our government functions is based
on norms. It's not written into law, it's not written
into policy, and we've experienced in the last eight years
(33:47):
what happens if somebody says I don't want to live
by those norms, and there are consequences if we as
a society decide whether it's down at a low level
somebody getting up with the fast food worker and deciding
that violence is the response. You know, that's a norm
violation all the way up to a president saying I
(34:09):
don't have to follow the rules, I am immune to
the laws. That those have consequences. So I think the
while there were many good outcomes of the exercise, and
you'll have to go see the film to learn more
about them, I was still left with this pit in
(34:30):
my stomach that there are a lot of policy questions
left unanswered. There are a lot of places that we
both in the government and then as a community, we
need to be wrestling with this and coming up with
answers before it happens. If you're dealing with it on
the day of and you don't know what your playbook is,
(34:51):
you're most likely going to lose, or in the way
that I view it, you're most likely going to lose life.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
Can I add something to society comment? Though, I mean,
he's right about economic disenfranchisement, but people have, and let's
just admit it, they have made fear of the other
American the American that doesn't look like you. That person's
getting ahead, that person's taking something from you, and those
(35:19):
people are for that person, and I'm for you. And
in a way that we've never seen, at least in
my lifetime, people who would expouse those beliefs, whether they
are white supremacists, have been invited to the party because
they are a critical piece of a voting block right now,
(35:40):
and that's something that needs to be extinguished. And so
we can't leave just the oververt racism of what's happening
in this country out of our discussion.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
We have one more clip that gets to something that
is really fascinating in this film, really the crux of
the film.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
There is a tool the president has.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
It's fully legal, also comes with a lot of consequences.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
It's called the Insurrection Act.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
It was passed in seventeen ninety two, and it gives
the President of the United States the power to use
the military against civilians on US soil in certain circumstances.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Listen to this.
Speaker 17 (36:19):
This is going to be a defining moment of your presidency.
Speaker 9 (36:21):
So the media sports and we have to understand why
they will want to give command and control.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
We do the.
Speaker 9 (36:30):
President the in Direction Act is a trap.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
We need to have a further converssy.
Speaker 9 (36:34):
It's a defining moment in their governors show.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Then we have what President, Your audience is the American public,
and they want to know that Congress is coming back
to certify.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
So we do have to come into agreement here. Because
time is moving on. You have to decide which way
you are going to want to move. Just President, ten
minutes remaining.
Speaker 5 (36:58):
The President is sweaty.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
He's going to have to make a decision.
Speaker 7 (37:03):
Mister President, are you invoking the Insurrection Act or federalizing
National Guard?
Speaker 1 (37:06):
What neither has happened yet.
Speaker 8 (37:08):
I'm not asking you, I'm asking the President.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
Are you doing either?
Speaker 11 (37:22):
Missident President?
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Mister President, President, President Governor Bullock, Mister President, easy day,
wasn't it? Did it make you wonder whether you really
wanted to run for president back in the day? What
was going through your mind as you were considering whether
to invoke the Insurrection Act?
Speaker 8 (37:40):
Well, first, a lot of voices, as you could say,
I mean Jack had said at some point the fog of.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
War, and you didn't have all of the information along
the way.
Speaker 8 (37:50):
As a governor, you're the commander in chief of your
National Guard had got to work with folks like General
say on a regular basis, but try to get a
hold in control of the situation while recognizing that like, look,
that's the nuclear option when you're sending in US military
(38:12):
against your own citizens when half of the country didn't
even think you were properly elected. Like, once you go there,
you can't put that back in the bottle. So it
was both thinking about how do you control the situation
and then what do we do the next day to
start hopefully healing this country.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Heidi Hidekamp, you're a senior advisor to the president. What
were you weighing as you thought about how to advise
him on whether to use the Insurrection Act?
Speaker 4 (38:43):
I think when you are trying to defend democracy and
you take the most extreme power that government has, which
would have been the Insurrection Act, basically declaring military law,
then you need to think about whether you're actually defending
democracy or whether you're just taking an easy way out.
And the other thing is, and you will see it
(39:05):
when you see the movie. We had incomplete information on
whether the governors were actually deploying the resources that they
already had at their ready, which is realistic.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Probably what would actually.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
Happen, absolutely, and we kept saying, get the governor on
the phone. You know, we're trying to trying to parse
through that whole system. And the interesting thing about this
exercise is Steve and I both come from state government.
We were both attorneys general. That's really where my heart is.
Even though I served in the Senate, I see myself
(39:41):
more as a state official, and I think we looked
at this through a lens of state government and state
responsibility in each one of these locations and the value
of the federalist system, federalism system that we have where
states have that autonomy and so to take that away
from states was another huge factor that led to recommendations
(40:04):
Governor Bullock.
Speaker 8 (40:05):
I guess and without sort of saying how it all ends.
One of the things that I was heartened with through
the exercise too, was like you had incredible military, former
four star generals involved, and you know, and part of
you might think, okay that a four star general would
(40:28):
say everything looks like a nail and we're the hammer.
But how thoughtful they were in providing counsel to us
as well.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
General thing, Yeah, if you were in that situation at
that moment and the President said, we're invoking the Insurrection Act.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
As a person in the military, what do you do?
You just have to do what he says.
Speaker 10 (40:53):
Well, so that is where I have to really stand
on principle, which I think I did in the exercise, right.
I really wanted to make sure that we understood what
that meant. And I think for you know, when you
get a chance to see wargame, I want you to
understand what that really means to you as a citizen.
(41:13):
That means that you're taking someone like us, and you're
asking us to go and fight against our families, our friends,
our aunts, our uncles, our neighbors. That happens abroad. It
doesn't happen here in the US, not anymore. And so
that is a nuclear option that you've got to be
(41:35):
prepared for the consequences when someone pulls that card. It
has long standing, far more consequences than you can imagine.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
Alex Vin been.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
It has already been reported that if President Trump were
to win again that he is advisors have said that
he is considering using the Interaction Act on the first
day if they are a mass protests.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Do you think that he would do that?
Speaker 12 (42:04):
I think he'd want to set the conditions for being
able to justify the Insurrection Act. I think, frankly, in
this scenario, I think the Red Cell was doing everything
they could to force the hand of the President and
have him invoke the Insurrection Act and use that as
a justification for widespread violence. I think Donald Trump would
(42:24):
be very eager to launch this kind of situation for
two different reasons. One because he gives him a chance
to seek retribution against his enemies, and two is that
it gives him some justification for holding on to power
doing the thing that he's already declared that he wants
to do, which is to become a dictator for a
single day.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
But as only on day one.
Speaker 12 (42:46):
Yeah, as we understand. If it's if you're a dictator
on day one, then you're a dictator forever until you're removed.
Speaker 1 (42:54):
Jesse Moss.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
One of the interesting things that we haven't talked about
is that this was filmed just blocks away from the Capitol.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
What a year after January two years after January sixth?
What was that like?
Speaker 6 (43:07):
I think we have these ghosts that we live with.
They're everywhere. They're in our hearts, our psychees, and the
very hotel where we filmed. It was a hotel that
insurrectionists stayed in on January sixth. It's the hotel we
reclaimed for democracy. That's how I like to think about it.
I think the exercise exhuoms ghosts and allows us to
look at them and confront our fears, but in what
(43:29):
I think is not an inflammatory and frightening way. A
little bit frightening, but I think in a constructive way,
because it's all of these people who I think want
to protect and defend democracy, and so I think we
do confront those ghosts, but in a very cathartic way.
We need to do that.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
Tony Gribber, what do you want an ordinary person who
sees this film to take away from?
Speaker 1 (43:53):
What are they supposed to do with this information?
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Obviously, if you were to play this in a room
in Washington with policymakers or people in the mid military, better.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Think about this, better be careful of that. But what
about just a regular person.
Speaker 7 (44:06):
Well, you know, the challenge for us was to take
this all in and make a film. So the film
has to provide an emotional journey for its audience, right,
that was important, and it has to deploy empathy because
if an audience doesn't feel anything, they're never moved to action, right,
So they had to care about all these people. They
had to feel what it would be like to be
(44:27):
sitting at that table, to be in President Hawtham's shoes
weighing the consequences of making these decisions. So it's my
hope that we have a beautiful broad theatrical release followed
by a really healthy life on a streaming platform, and
that people can see this movie with community right, they
(44:48):
can sit in a movie theater next to other people
and feel the community, right, and that the film sparks conversation,
and it's not a monolith, right, It's not suppress of
different points of view, it's a launching point.
Speaker 6 (45:04):
I think there's probably a lot of disagreement on this
stage about particular political issues, and you know, we come
from all different perspectives on the spectrum, but I think
we do have common concerns and values. And I think
that's what I saw in what Chanessa organized and the
different backgrounds of the people involved in this that I
wanted to be a part of, to witness, to try
to capture because I think that's a powerful lesson for
(45:25):
all of us.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
Alex Finman.
Speaker 12 (45:27):
Yeah, so I think this is going to actually tap
into a zeitgeist of the moment. Unfortunately, we're now in
the world where American public, large swaths of the American
public have woken up to the dangers, have shaken off
complacency about the security of our democracy. I think that
played out in the way elections unfolded in twenty twenty,
(45:48):
twenty twenty two, this off cycle election in twenty twenty three,
people are voting on the basis of preserving democracy, and
I think this film is going to strike at a
moment where one six is still fresh in people's minds.
We're coming up on a presidential election, and people can
reflect on the fact that we're still in harm's way,
We're still in danger, and we need to we need
to take charge of our democracy, vote accordingly to preserve
(46:10):
our form of government.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
Elizabeth Newman, do you think that the lessons have been
learned in Washington to be prepared for what's what could happen.
Speaker 11 (46:19):
Washington is having a hard time getting anything done right now,
So I had hope that we might see some laws
passed to address everything from the vulnerability is demonstrated on
January sixth to our domestic terrorism architecture, which a whole
other conversation, but is woefully equipped when you compare how
(46:44):
we're able to go after international terrorism. So there's vulnerabilities
in our structure that have not been fixed. I do
think that the Executive Branch is much more attuned to
domestic terear. They've done a lot of work to better
understand it, to better use the tools that we do
(47:05):
have to go after domestic terrorists.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
But it is.
Speaker 11 (47:08):
Really fraught for the federal government to try to address
this mass political violence problem we have. That it goes
to what the governor mentioned. When the federal government does something,
it is perceived as the Democrats are doing something to
(47:30):
the Republicans. It is blue state against red state, even
if the civil servants in the executive Branch many of
them are Republican and conservative, but we see demonization of
our law enforcement agencies. We see accusations that the Department
(47:50):
of Justice has been politicized to go after political enemies.
So that's the operating space that the Executive branch is
in right now. Damned if you do, damned I don't.
And so they're doing the best they can, but they
recognize that if they overstep, it actually makes a problem worse.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
That was former Trump Administration Homeland Security official Elizabeth Newman,
one of the participants in the new documentary film Wargame,
which was released in theaters this month. We'll link you
to more about the film and how you can see
it at Listen to the Middle dot com.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
It's in select.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Theaters now and we'll be available on demand in the
coming weeks. Next week, we're back with another live show
where we'll focus on the issues important to younger voters.
This selection, but it's get so many calls from young people.
So if you're out there and you're under let's say forty,
call eight.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
Four four four Middle.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
That's eight four four four six four three three five
three anytime and leave us a message, or you can
call in live next week. The Middle is brought to
you by LONGNOK Media, distributed by Illinois Public Media in Urbana, Illinois,
and produced by Joeann Jennings, Harrison Patino, John Barth, and
Danny Alexander. Our technical director is Jason Croft.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
Our theme music was composed by Andrew Haik.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
Thanks also to Nashville Public Radio, iHeartMedia, and the more
than four hundred and ten public radio stations that are
making it possible for people across the country to listen
to the Middle I'm Jeremy Hobson. Talk to you next week.
Host
Jeremy Hobson
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