Fmr. DHS Chief Of Staff: ‘Everything Donald Trump Did With DHS Was Politicized’ | Deadline | MSNBC

[Music] domestic violent extremism or dve and dve is an increasingly complex threat that is growing in the united states domestic violent extremism as we battle violent extremism foreign and domestic to meeting the evolving threat of violent extremism a rise of political extremism white supremacy domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat again everyone it's five o'clock in the east the biden administration has stressed since day one its priority to confront the growing threat of domestic violent extremism in this country and late yesterday it took another big step to do so as homeland security secretary alejandro mayorkas announced an internal review to root out extremists in the department's ranks in a memo to dhs staff the secretary not holding back in his assessment writing this quote domestic violent extremism poses the most lethal and persistent terrorism-related threat to our country today we will not allow hateful acts or violent extremism to penetrate the fabric of our department and fundamentally compromise our ability to protect the homeland the new york times describes the review this way quote the announcement on monday highlights the administration's decision to prioritize combating domestic extremism after decades in which the government at times dismissed it as a minor threat or hesitated to invest additional resources to fight it it is also a pivot from the approach taken by donald trump who pressured federal agencies to divert resources to target the antifa movement and left-wing groups even though law enforcement authorities concluded that far-right and militia violence was a more serious threat dhs's review follows the pentagon's 60-day stand down to address extremism in the military and it comes as the country is still in a heightened threat environment due to potential violence from extremists motivated by quote perceived grievances fueled by false narratives that threat appearing not to be a worry for republicans who have emboldened many with extremist views by continuing to spew the big lie of voter fraud the lie that incited the angry mob to storm the capital on january 6 and laid bare the consequences of ignoring the threats of far-right domestic extremism the nationwide wave of restrictive voting bills has not slowed 361 bills have been put forward so far in 47 states that's despite new polling that shows the majority of voters are not concerned about voter fraud because there isn't really any from nbc news latest poll people are much more concerned about making sure everyone who wants to vote is able to and nearly three-quarters of americans are confident in their state's ability to administer a fair election where votes are counted accurately the biden administration showing no tolerance for extremism as the gop continues pushing false narratives is where we start this hour with some of our favorite reporters and friends carol lennog is here washington post national investigative reporter and msnbc contributor also joining us miles taylor former chief of staff at the department of homeland security during the trump years he's the co-founder and adviser to the group the republican political alliance for integrity and reform also joining us msnbc national security analyst clint watts former fbi special agent and distinguished research fellow at the foreign policy research institute miles taylor i start with you is there extremism at dhs did you see any well look there's no question this is a problem nicole and i would start off by saying that former president donald trump's dithering when it came to domestic terrorism put american lives in danger without question now when it comes to the threat within the ranks of the federal government look when the dhs secretary says this is one of the most pernicious national security threats to the country and the most serious terror threat the first thing you want to make sure sure to do is that your ranks have not been infiltrated by those individuals now this isn't a political move this is what we do when it comes to trying to screen and weed out foreign spies from our workforce weed out international terrorists weed out transnational organized criminals so it is right and appropriate that the department of homeland security is screening its workforce to make sure that there are not domestic terrorists who've infiltrated the department what i will say though nicole is this they've got to handle this with kid gloves they've got to do it very cautiously because if there is even a hint that there's political motivation behind this it will undermine the cause now i believe that secretary ali mayorkas is going to do this in a disciplined way but they've got to do it cautiously if a democrat said you have to use kid gloves to root out terrorism every republican i know would kill them do you want to elaborate on your point about kid gloves sorry nicole i missed that we lost you on the audio so you said that mayorkas has to use kid gloves in rooting out extremism in the ranks of the department of homeland security and perhaps no agent you know this better than me was more politicized frankly by donald trump's sadism than the one you were chief of staff to you we want to i mean i think if a democrat used the word king gloves in the context of rooting out terrorism every republican you and i both once knew would kill them what do you mean by kid gloves well i just mean he's got to handle it carefully to make sure that there's no sense of political affair interference in the process because you're absolutely right nicole everything donald trump did with dhs was politicized and it's why it put the country in danger i believe this administration is undertaking these actions in an apolitical way driven by intelligence they just must do it carefully because right now there's going to be republican critics who pounce and say this review is just meant to root out people who are conservatives i don't believe that to be the case but they've got to approach the process delicately but it's important that they do it this is a very big sign that the biden administration is taking the terror threat seriously in a way that donald trump never did so clint watts what does that look like when the extremists themselves associate with one political party there aren't um you know i have run the video i'm not going to do it again today of the insurrection countless times there aren't any biden harris flags there the insurrectionists were carrying trump flags and confederate flags they weren't carrying american flags most for the most part they were carrying trump flags so what is a sort of careful and surgical examination for extremism in their ranks look like if you cleave off political affinity this is going to be one of the complications nicole which is what is extreme speech or extreme behavior they'll have to define that they'll have to define it very clearly and then really they have to enforce it universally you know through the ranks the department of defense has been through this before and i noticed that some of the language from the dhs memo and some of the things they refer to actually come from department of defense it seems memorandums and and programs when i was a young lieutenant in the 90s we had a similar problem with white supremacy in the ranks and we did run these sorts of programs but it was always quite a challenge the added challenge of this this time is there's no foreign terrorist organization designation process so like miles was talking about if we were dealing with international terrorists if they were talking about al-qaeda isis inspired by either that's very easy to designate and then further police in this case it is not we've seen as we've talked about on here before overlap between law enforcement and many militia-type groups we've seen people from the armed forces and law enforcement groups and other agencies show up at the insurrection this is going to be problematic i imagine because as soon as they show up to a training they're going to have views that oftentimes are sharing and i can tell you just from doing law enforcement classes over the last five years it was routine when i would go into a class to see maga stickers or mega phone screen savers when i would go in because they definitely aligned with them so i think the politization politicization of the military and law enforcement by donald trump has really come to fracture everything from the federal state local level in terms of our enforcement agencies so elizabeth newman has made this point too obviously we have a freedom to associate with whomever we want in this country but that's not what we're talking about we're talking about the folks that christopher wray has been seemingly under the trump administration singularly jumping up and down warning people about and that's a radicalized domestic violent extremist can you clint just talk about what they'll be looking for to differentiate between just an american who happened to support donald trump over the last four years and someone who has potentially been radicalized i i think it's three things nicole it's probably biases do they have a racially motivated bias uh which is allowing or affecting the way they conduct their job that undermines the integrity of the agencies it's really conduct on becoming of the position i think the second part will be any sort of or main or notation of going towards violence so when we're doing radicalization training we usually talk about a spectrum of behaviors introduced to the ideology uh experimenting with it fully committed to it and then committed to violence those that are committed to violence and that's what director ray talked i thought very effectively about that category will be primary and i think the other part that we have to look at which is very uncommon for our country is trying to actually undermine democratic processes institutions the chain of command and the fabric of america itself it's pretty bizarre that at this point in our country they used to ask the question have you ever been part of an organization entity or tried to overthrow the united states government was kind of a throwaway question when you'd have it on your national security uh background check for the first time in our country i i think people can't say yes or i can't say no to that they're actually saying yes to that question so a lot of those questions that we always took for granted is like why would we have them in there i think that's going to hang people up to where they're actually undermining the integrity of the democracy that they say that they're trying to enforce i think that'll be a third category that's out there

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Length: 10min 27sec (627 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 27 2021