Trump’s J6 Pardons, the Militia Movement, and the Border

President Trump’s executive action granting clemency to all of the January 6th insurrectionists – violent and non-violent alike – has been met with concern by legal experts and people who have been studying and reporting on militia groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys for years. Kara speaks with Dr. Amy Cooter, director of research at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and author of Nostalgia, Nationalism and the US Militia Movement; investigative reporter Tess Owen who has covered violent extremist groups, including the J6 protesters extensively; and Paul Rosenzweig, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security under George W. Bush, who specializes in issues relating to domestic and homeland security about the message the pardons send to violent militias, the impact of social media (and Elon Musk) on far-right extremism, and whether Trump has the authority to deputize these groups, especially on the border. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:12Kara Swisher?

  Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is "On" with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. We're less than two weeks into the new administration, and things are already feeling very, very different. In fact, it feels menacing and has a lot of momentum with Trump using executive orders as cudgels to all kinds of groups, from LGBTQ+ people to immigrants to just about anyone who stands in his way. From the very first day, President Trump has been quick to follow through on some of his campaign promises, as I expected him to, including granting clemency to all of the January 6th insurrectionists, the nonviolent and the violent, including the ones who attacked the Capitol Police and commuted the sentences of 14 individuals charged with being seditious conspiracists.

• 0:57Kara Swisher?

  That includes the leaders of two militia groups, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. Trump also directed the Justice Department to dismiss another 300 cases that were still pending in court. There is obviously so much to talk about here. The militia is currently operating all over the country, there are ideologies that separate or unite them, and any potential role they might have in the new administration. My guests today are three people who have been studying and tracking the movements of these militia groups and their place in the current environment. Dr. Amy Cooter is the Director of Research at Middlebury's Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism. She studies domestic militias and groups of armed individuals who see it as their civic duty to uphold the Constitution the way they believe it should be interpreted.

• 1:40Kara Swisher?

  Tess Owen is an investigative reporter who has covered extremism in politics and events surrounding January 6th extensively. And Paul Rosenzweig is a cybersecurity lawyer who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security under George W. Bush, and now specializes in issues relating to domestic and homeland security. Our expert question comes from David Rode, National Security Editor at NBC News and the author of "Where Tyranny Begins." Stick around.

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• 4:01Kara Swisher?

  Amy, Tess, Paul, welcome. Thanks for being on On. Thank you for having us. We're speaking on January 28th, just a week after President Trump took office, launching many executive orders, including issuing pardons and commutations to all of the nearly 1,600 January 6 protesters. As people have been following January 6th insurrectionist militia groups and Trump for years, give me one or two words that sums up your reaction. Paul, you start, then Amy, then Tess.

• 4:28Speaker 06

  Shameful.

• 4:30Kara Swisher?

  Shameful. Okay. Amy?

• 4:33Speaker 07

  Unfortunately unsurprising.

• 4:35Kara Swisher?

  Okay. Tess?

• 4:37Speaker 08

  Surprised, but shouldn't have been.

• 4:39Kara Swisher?

  Shouldn't have been. Okay. Let's start with that Tess. Talk about these people, these nearly 1,600 people who were pardoned and put them in groups because I think differentiating them is important for people to understand.

• 4:51Speaker 08

  You know, I think it's important to know that the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, the two main extremist groups who are among the January 6ers, that, you know, those rightfully get a lot of attention because of kind of what they tell us about society and political violence, but the vast majority of the violent offenders in that group were not affiliated with an extremist group. And I think that that's kind of something important to remember as we talk about this, that these are people who were radicalized into committing violence on behalf of Trump on January 6. We know that 169, I think is the right number, of those people assaulted or pleaded guilty to assaulting police. 600 were convicted of either assaulting police or resisting arrest.

• 5:37Speaker 08

  There were groups, you know, leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers who were convicted of suggestive conspiracy.

• 5:43Kara Swisher?

  Okay. So Amy, you've written about militia groups actually tend to grow when they perceive themselves to be targeted.

• 5:50Kara Swisher?

  The reason I'm asking is, do you think the Biden DOJ made a mistake of going after rioters who weren't directly tied to these militia groups or by prosecuting people who weren't? There are like Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio or people who didn't commit extremely violent stuff, which were obvious from some of the videos.

• 6:07Speaker 07

  You know, I'm not the legal expert on this panel, but I think it was nonetheless important for the Biden administration to send a message. And I don't know that every single person was appropriately charged, given the underlying action, but let's assume that they were. And if we can assume that, I think it's really important to send a message that at its core says insurrection is bad, we need to support democracy and democratic principles. Militias had an interesting response to January 6. We know that there were certainly some militia members involved in the insurrection, but many of them that I have followed for a long time were looking at that and thought it was terrible, thought it was terrible for the country, thought it was terrible for the militia movement.

• 6:49Speaker 07

  And so they didn't necessarily complain when some of the perpetrators were held accountable.

• 6:54Kara Swisher?

  Because?

• 6:56Speaker 07

  Because they thought they deserved it. They they thought they were acting in a way that was not supported by the law, was not supported by patriotism as they understood it either.

• 7:05Kara Swisher?

  Okay, Paul, from a legal standpoint, Trump's argument has been that their sentences are ridiculous and excessive. He's called them hostages. Talk about these sentences, whether they're too heavy-handed, too broad, or just the right thing.

• 7:18Speaker 06

  Well, I think the only way to answer that is really on a case-by-case basis. The reality is is is that the overwhelming majority of what you and I would consider the minor offenders, the people who were who pled guilty to misdemeanor trespass things, so did no jail time at all. Yeah, there are a few exceptions, but by and large, the people who went to prison were the people who, as Tess described it, were convicted of some form of violence, some form of resisting arrest, some form of assault against police. And the people who got the most significant sentences, the ones that were in the eight, 10, 12-year range, were some of the organizers of this, the Proud Boys and and the Oath Keepers,

• 8:02Speaker 06

  who were convicted of seditious conspiracy, that is, of plotting to, you know, to disrupt the operations of Congress. And so, by and large, I would say that the president's characterization is inaccurate. That that, you know, the sorting function is by no means perfect. No one would ever say it is. But by and large, the judges of the District of Columbia, District Court, did a very good job of assessing individuals on the merit and, you know, kind of grading their sentencing based upon comparative guilt next to others.

• 8:44Speaker 06

  You know, there are any number of instances, for example, of judges who issued sentences that were below that which the prosecutors recommended.

• 8:54Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 8:55Speaker 06

  Precisely because they perceived that the defendants who, to some had accepted responsibility and expressed remorse, some had admitted only to nonviolent offenses, they racked and stacked them. Pretty reasonably.

• 9:14Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 9:15Speaker 06

  Again, I wouldn't validate each and every sentence, but you know, for my money, and this is me speaking personally, by and large, the judges were more lenient than I would have wanted them to be.

• 9:26Kara Swisher?

  So how did Trump's argument get such purchase? Now, I'm not talking about calling them tourists, which was insane, but the idea, why does it have such resonance, this accusation that Trump is making, from your perspective, from a legal standpoint?

• 9:40Speaker 06

  Well, I don't think it is a legal, it is a legal argument. I mean, honestly, because in law, it never got any purchase at all. I mean, none of the judges, not even the ones who were Trump appointees in the District of Columbia, ever accepted the, we're just tourists and they're being unjustly prosecuted. It gained purchase only, only amongst Trump's

• 10:06Kara Swisher?

  Trump supporters.

• 10:08Speaker 06

  Sycophantic supporters. And, and as to their mentality, why it gained purchase there, um, you know, I'm going to turn it back and say, I'm, I'm not the sociologist or the expert in, in militias and Trumpism on this panel, so I'll have to turn it back to them.

• 10:26Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, Tess first and then Amy, what do you, what do you imagine? Because there is, as it goes on, his accusations as an arguments get some sort of purchase. It does.

• 10:35Speaker 08

  I actually, I spoke to some ex DOJ officials about this idea of overreach and whether there was any merit to these arguments. And kind of what they said was sort of what Paul's saying is that overreach is a matter of perception, really. And I think that what it was really about was about narrative. And kind of midway through 2021, we saw this narrative of the idea that these January Sixers, especially those being held in the DC jail, that they were being treated disproportionately, poorly compared to others, that they were victims of political persecution. That they were languishing in these cells and being treated horribly and that they were the victims actually of a kind of corrupt Biden administration that's hell bent on jailing its political enemies.

• 11:20Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 11:20Speaker 08

  And this this narrative is really what helped rehabilitate the January sixes, but rehabilitate also the entire MAGA movement, which was kind of floundering at that point. And Trump, you know, we saw Trump hitch his own issues, his own legal woes to the same narrative.

• 11:36Kara Swisher?

  Right, this idea of being persecuted and everything else. Tess, you wrote, you did write the article this fall for New York Magazine, what was happening inside the Patriot Wing in your story in Wire, was titled, "The Proud Boys Are Plotting a Comeback and They Want Revenge." I'd just like to add to that, and then Amy, I'd like you to weigh in after that, is what are you hearing from those groups and what revenge would look like from their perspective if they have this narrative in their favor?

• 12:01Speaker 08

  It's a very good question, because I mean, as far as the Proud Boys are concerned, you know, we've definitely seen their MO or their activities shift since January 6. We've seen them pivot pretty hard into local activism, really until inauguration day. We haven't really seen them rally in a large place in so many numbers. We've seen them kind of targeting school board meetings and drag shows and taking on this culture war stuff. So it's unclear, there's also been kind of a splintering within the group where where some have kind of sought legitimacy by allying themselves with kind of political groups, whereas others have aligned with more hardcore factions like neo-Nazis. And so when Tarrio and others talk about revenge, it's kind of unclear whether they

• 12:43Speaker 08

  see revenge as political violence or whether they see revenge as, okay, we hope that Trump and Trump's DOJ is going to go after our enemies and go after the FBI agents and go after the prosecutors who, quote, "did this to us." I think that's that's currently not clear. But what Tarrio did make clear in the interview he gave to Infowars after he walked out of prison was that he still very much sees the Proud Boys as a kind of defense force for Trump supporters.

• 13:12Kara Swisher?

  So Amy, talk about the narrative and this idea of they feel they were unjustly, you know, there's sort of this story, the IRA, this has happened all over the world in this idea of freedom fighters versus terrorists, essentially.

• 13:23Speaker 07

  Right, and I think Tess is exactly right about what happened sort of following the event itself, but I think that the narrative thread started before that, that it's fundamentally the same narrative that pushed people to believe the election would be stolen, that it was being stolen, that it was, in fact, in the past, stolen. And so even though some of the movement lost momentum during Biden's administration in some ways, that narrative was still in the backdrop. There was a belief among a lot of folks that Biden's administration was completely illegitimate, that Trump was going to come back and be victorious and swoop in and save them regardless of whatever injustices happened that day. And so I think that there were things that happened in the justice

• 14:08Speaker 07

  system and around the narrative of unjust persecution, not just prosecution, that followed and amplified that. But I think that a lot of people just maintained that thread all along.

• 14:18Kara Swisher?

  All right. Every week we get a question from outside. Let's have a listen to this one.

• 14:23Speaker 09

  Hi, I'm David Rhoades, the National Security Editor at NBC News and a former guest on the show. My big question is, will these prisoners be further radicalized now that they've been released from prison and further emboldened? Or do you think their time in prison might cause them to think twice about engaging in violence again?

• 14:42Kara Swisher?

  So Paul, let's start with you. Do judges and prosecutors have a reason to be afraid? And what about this emboldenment when you when you get off like this?

• 14:51Speaker 06

  The entire theory of criminal punishment is one of deterrence, both general deterrence, that is, the idea that the judicial system generally deters most crime, and specific deterrence, that is, that I can convince you personally to refrain from bad conduct by imposing upon you personally adverse consequences. The pardons in this case do not serve the traditional purposes of pardons, namely correcting an injustice of some sort. Rather, they seem to me to be explicitly about eroding that deterrence function by

• 15:36Speaker 06

  making it clear that at least for so long as Donald Trump is president,

• 15:43Speaker 06

  People who engage in violence on his behalf, he will have their back and issue pardons. Now, again, each case is different. I am 100% certain that there are some guys, and maybe even gals, though it was mostly men, but some people who went into prison, who had such a miserable experience that they're like, I'm not doing that ever again. I don't care what Trump says. But there are lots of others, like we just heard about Tarrio, right, and the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who are inevitably going to think that I can do what I want. And especially if what I want somehow manages

• 16:28Speaker 06

  to cement Trump or Trumpism in the next administration in four or eight years. So I think that much of what Trump has done is going to create a remarkably dangerous moment of violence in the next year or two, in which some of his supporters think that no amount of violence in his behalf is beyond the pale.

• 17:00Kara Swisher?

  So Tess, you had written about this in this Patriot Wing, where they became more emboldened. These are already some violent people. Talk a little bit about this question that David had is, will they be further radicalized from your perspective? Were they already there, essentially?

• 17:15Speaker 08

  So those who don't know about it, the Patriot Wing was the name that was adopted for this part of the DC jail, where January 6ers pretrial were kind of sequestered from the general population.

• 17:26Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 17:27Speaker 08

  The decision to put them all there, I couldn't quite get a sense of who made that decision. But what became clear through the reporting I did was that it was functioning as a sort of incubator for this very same belief that brought them all to the Capitol in the first place.

• 17:43Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 17:43Speaker 08

  And that there was a culture inside that wing where, you know, people were kind of put through purity tests when they first arrived. And if they, you know, if they showed any sign that they might be a quote fed, or they exhibited views that were contrary to the others in the wing, they were shunned. It kind of operated a bit like a gang. And it's not just the people who are in the wing, but there's also this massive support system outside of January 6 activists that's, you know, putting money into their commissary funds and helping their legal defense funds, which are also shoring up these same belief systems. And so I think that was, you know, troubling.

• 18:18Kara Swisher?

  They were already cooking that in that direction.

• 18:21Speaker 08

  Yes.

• 18:22Kara Swisher?

  Amy, talk about this because if they're, they were already radicalized, they got, possibly got more radicalized in prison. Some of them regretted it, certainly. But a lot of the reaction when they got out was, I'm buying motherfucking guns, that kind of stuff.

• 18:35Speaker 07

  Well, I think Paul is exactly right, that there's going to be a bit of a split reaction. In some past instances of militia violence, where militia members have really believed they were doing what they needed to do for the good of the country, they've been arrested, they've served time in prison. One case in particular with the Hattari militia in Michigan in 2009, most of those folks were actually eventually acquitted, but they had been incarcerated while awaiting trial.

• 19:03Kara Swisher?

  Sure.

• 19:04Speaker 07

  And most of them, once they were released, went back home and said, I want nothing to do with this ever again. It went further than I thought, and maybe I didn't really get punished for this, but it was awful. It disrupted my life. On the other hand, especially with figures like Tarrio and Stuart Rhodes, people who already had, frankly, a degree of clout in the movement before this ever happened, they're really in a position where Trump could, if not officially, effectively deputize them. And what I'm worried about most is the impact that that kind of perceived legitimacy from the highest office will have on border militias specifically. And thinking about just generally, as Tess was saying, there could be a range of violence

• 19:49Speaker 07

  that is legitimized, that is seen as not only necessary in their worldview, but something that is being signed off on by the president.

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• 23:05Kara Swisher?

  Biden preemptively pardoned former chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Health, Mark Milian, members of the bipartisan select committee that investigated January 6, including Liz Cheney. Trump, on the other hand, revoked security protections and issued orders announcing investigations into the Justice Department. This episode is coming out on Thursday, January 30, the day that Cash Patel's Senate confirmation hearing to become FBI director is scheduled. Paul, you said that if Patel becomes FBI director, he would be the poster child of vindictiveness. I think that's pretty clear. He would be not just a deputized person, he would be the official that would allow this to happen. Do you think the preemptive pardons actually protect any of those people?

• 23:49Speaker 06

  Well, he wouldn't just be the officer allowing it to happen, he would be, as director of the FBI, empowered to order it to happen. The FBI's investigative authority is limited mostly by internal guidelines called the Domestic Investigatory Oversight Guidelines, or DIODs, which have been around for, ever since the Nixon abuses of the 1970s, which are intended to

• 24:20Speaker 06

  Cabin the ability of the FBI to initiate investigations for pretextual reasons, for punitive reasons, for political reasons. But they are just guidelines and each and every one of them is subject to waiver or changed by the Director of the FBI and the Attorney General. We can't tell for sure, but given what Trump has done in the last week, which has been the most expansive assertion of executive authority

• 24:48Kara Swisher?

  It is indeed.

• 24:49Speaker 06

  we've ever seen in this country, in so many ways that we could spend eons talking about, it seems to me highly likely that one of the other ways that he would implement that authority would be to give Patel free rein to conduct investigations of anybody he wants. The pardons that President Biden issued to people squarely in Patel's crosshairs, like General Milley and Liz Cheney and Anthony Fauci, will serve as some protective benefit to them. It will mean that they can't be prosecuted in court. It's an open legal question whether it means they still have to suffer the costs and distraction of an investigation, even

• 25:34Speaker 06

  if that investigation can lead nowhere. That's actually never really been decisively litigated. I would hope that it would prevent that as well. But, you know, those pardons have to be cold comfort. It's shocking that we've come to this.

• 25:53Kara Swisher?

  They could investigate and harass them, in other words, is what you're saying.

• 25:55Speaker 06

  Well, certainly, they can investigate and harass people associated with them, and they might be able to make investigative demands directly to the pardoned people under the guise of investigating somebody else. I mean, if I'm investigating you and you've got a pardon, I can harass Tess and Amy all I want.

• 26:15Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 26:15Speaker 06

  As your friends who have information, air quotes, about you. And so it will be, it will, I I will be unsurprised at the depths to which the Trump vengeance tour goes.

• 26:30Kara Swisher?

  Okay, so Cash Patel clearly aligned himself with the January 6 rioters. The FBI is responsible for tracking, quote, "domestic terrorism." Patel has vowed to turn the FBI into a museum of the deep state and basically dismantle it. Amy, in your book, you write about how Trump has aligned himself with militant accelerationists. Explain who they are and how the deconstruction of government that we're already seeing aligns with that mentality. And I will add that I have talked about this in Silicon Valley forever. They don't want to rebuild, they want to destroy. They're more focused on businesses, but it's often those terms of destruction and disruption in a way that's destruction, really.

• 27:06Speaker 07

  Sure, so accelerationism at its core is this idea that the decline of society is inevitable and probably catastrophic. There are some people who think it's their personal responsibility to hasten us toward that inevitable point through the use of violence. And we call them militant accelerationists. Not all militias are militant accelerationists in nature because accelerationism is what we call ideologically agnostic. It can draw people from a variety of political perspectives. But anyone who has this standpoint that our system, whether it's political, social, economic, or all the above, are somehow fundamentally corrupt, not serving the interests of the

• 27:48Speaker 07

  people, that there's absolutely no way through the legitimate political process that we can fix this, kind of serve the interests of those accelerationists. Even if they themselves don't quite evince that hard line, many people can interpret them as saying that there's no solution here short of violence, short of what we might think of as coming just a little bit shy of revolution. Most of the time, these folks don't really have an idea of the exact future that they want. And what we've seen among Trump supporters writ large is this idea that they don't like the system, but somehow they still trust Trump as part of the system to fix things. He has successfully marketed

• 28:33Speaker 07

  himself as a bit of an outsider to many of them in a way that they don't necessarily challenge him so much as what they perceive to be broader problems with the government or the country as a whole.

• 28:44Kara Swisher?

  One of the ways this goes around is through social media. Now, I just noticed some recent polls that show voter sentiment is very low to what Trump has done here. Tess, talk a little bit about this because people don't seem to like these moves, right? And at the same time, these groups have returned to Facebook, they're reorganizing on there, and Meta has given them free rein, even if the average citizen thinks letting these people out was wrong. And most of these voter sentiment polls are showing this at this point. Other things they're more supportive of immigration reform, etc.

• 29:21Speaker 08

  I mean, I think that the idea, even if they don't agree with the pardons, the kind of anti-government sentiment that we've seen kind of boil up and over in the mainstream in the last few years, I think that and kind of the hostilities towards perceptions of the FBI, perceptions that the DOJ is corrupt, I think those have become incredibly mainstreamed in the last few years. And, you know, those views are shared widely and freely on places like Facebook. And you don't need to be a part of militia to have those views, but we have seen also a militia resurgence on Facebook in the last few years, or in the last year especially.

• 29:58Kara Swisher?

  And that causes them to be able to organize there, correct? That's how reorganize there where they organized previously.

• 30:05Speaker 08

  Yes, and it also creates a kind of a fertile environment to pull people into those. You know, I've reported a little bit about on these groups return to Facebook. And oftentimes what we've seen is that they use these sort of larger, public facing groups that are kind of Called something somewhat innocuous, but kind of centered around an anti-government ideology. And from there, people are kind of siphoned off into smaller groups that are more targeted around kind of training and actually enlisting in a specific organized group.

• 30:34Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, so it's like a Patrick Henry group or something like that. Yeah, a bigger one like that. So the big reason these accounts were deplatformed in the first place is because Meta was afraid people were inciting violence, organizing violent protests on their platforms. Paul, from a legal perspective, do the platforms need to worry about this anymore? They've certainly taken all the guardrails off, especially Mark Zuckerberg at Meta.

• 30:56Speaker 06

  Well, that is an interesting question. It depends, I think, upon what you think is going to happen to the tech industry in the next two years in the administration. Certainly, as a retrospective matter, the settled law is that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects against liability for what social media places post online. There's been a significant movement in Congress on a bipartisan basis to modify Section 230.

• 31:30Kara Swisher?

  There has.

• 31:31Speaker 06

  Most of that argument has revolved around keeping children safe online, child pornography, horrible sexual abuse materials that proliferate. But the legal principle would be the same, and liability for posting would extend, if the law were changed, to media companies that posted, you know, exhortations to violence that became real and that failed to exercise their newly enacted obligations to monitor the content of what is on their website. I am not a smart enough political analyst to predict how a fight between

• 32:14Speaker 06

  The people who want to rein in social media, kind of the Bannonites of MAGA, and the tech bros of the Elon Musk variety, actually plays out in Trump's head or in Trump's administration. But there's at least a possibility that two years from now it will change.

• 32:31Kara Swisher?

  But right now, they are legally protected. Right now, they didn't have to pull people off, they didn't have to deplatform anybody, correct? At this moment, they're protected. So Amy, you write in the book about social media, especially Facebook played a huge role in giving the militia movement momentum, and then deplatforming them disrupted their growth. I have warned about this for two decades now, about how they organize. And they're also in the WhatsApp, they're all over the place in various, various stuff that you can't hack into necessarily or see. So how important do you see them now as organizing principles, Meta and X? And what role do you think someone like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg play? And the new moderation rules impacting the group's ability to proliferate?

• 33:16Speaker 07

  You know, it's interesting, because there are some groups that have gone back to Meta, there are some that never really left, they were just a little bit more clever about how to stay on those spaces. But so many of them fractured and went to other places, and frankly, returned kind of to their practice of the 90s of really focusing on more direct communication with people who were already in their communities and using Zello, which is kind of like a radio almost that you can use on your phone. And it's just a way to stay more private, but also kind of, again, refocusing on that community initiative as opposed to what was becoming a more national movement before January 6th happened and before Facebook deplatformed them.

• 33:57Speaker 07

  So it's not entirely clear to me that we're going to see some of the more dangerous elements really coming back to those spaces, because I feel like they've talked amongst themselves about how to stay more off the grid so they can get away with more things, quite frankly, in some of those more private places.

• 34:16Kara Swisher?

  What, do they consult with ISIS on how to do this?

• 34:18Speaker 07

  Well, I mean, I think that they frankly sat back and reconsidered some of their opsec after Facebook deeply platformed them in particular, because despite the fact that militias say they're prepared for everything, the vast majority of them did not have a fallback plan for social media should that disappear overnight. I do think that we are seeing some very loud voices on social media right now, particularly on X, who we've started kind of calling influencers because often they they keep their hands clean, but they certainly inspire other people into violence and other nasty actions. And I there seems to be very little appetite to limit that or control their possible influence right this moment.

• 35:02Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 35:03Speaker 07

  And I I think that that among the folks that I'm following, most of them are seeing Zuckerberg Zuckerberg and Elon as proponents of free speech and like what they're doing to the platforms. They they believe, even if they're they're very not racist themselves, or at least try to be, they believe that the marketplace of ideas will will naturally shut those things down.

• 35:24Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, that's their argument. But speaking of which, speaking of people who are doing that, before the pardons, we saw Elon Musk do what was a fascist salute on stage during inauguration day event, which engendered controversy, but then followed it with a bunch of explicitly Nazi jokes on X. Talk a little bit more about these moments, Tess, in terms of of his role, because that's exactly what he's doing. And it's not even dog whistle. That's that's even too too subtle what's happening here. It's very explicit, and he's allowing others to do the same thing on a platform. Mark is being a little more implicit in terms of letting people do whatever they want. But talk about that. And Paul, I'd love your insight into what that there's obviously no liability, but what does that do? Tess, first.

• 36:07Speaker 08

  I think Elon Musk is molded truly by 4chan troll culture. We've seen this with the far right or with the alt-right, where you can say one thing, and you know that it's a dog whistle, but then you can also say, oh, it was just a joke, or, you know, where things have layers of meaning, whether he's trying to create these layer of meaning or he just simply doesn't care. I think it's more likely the latter. But I think it's that's a kind of a key rhetorical tool that we've seen among this like 4chan troll types online. And that's definitely kind of the culture that I think has shaped him.

• 36:42Kara Swisher?

  And what impact do you think he has?

• 36:45Speaker 08

  Well, I mean, the far right love him. You know, the guardrails are completely off on X. It is a swamp of neo-Nazi content and far-right content. You don't have to be on there very long to kind of run into full-on Holocaust denialism.

• 37:01Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, I call it a Nazi porn bar. I'm sure he'll be suing me at some point in that. But does it have that, does it create a situation of these influencers that Amy was talking about?

• 37:12Speaker 08

  Where these influencers or where these kind of fringe voices are getting clout? Yes, definitely. I mean, also, they have blue ticks by their name. You know, they've been able to kind of buy their way to some form of legitimacy through the kind of different mechanisms that he's introduced or taken away from X.

• 37:27Kara Swisher?

  Right. And Paul, does it have any legal or can they just do this? Do this without any impunity? With impunity, excuse me?

• 37:35Speaker 06

  It's really quite, with impunity, it's really quite interesting. In the United States, it's almost certainly action with impunity. What is developing, which is going to be quite interesting, is that Europe has much different sensibilities about free speech issues, especially with regard to hate speech, and especially with regard to pseudo-Nazi or Nazism speech, especially in Germany. There is a burgeoning sense that Europe may try and deplatform X or regulate X or fine X.

• 38:14Speaker 06

  I think the problem with any of that is really that Musk is too rich to care. I mean, he'll spend any amount of money, he'll pay any fine. You know, it's not just that he's a troll, it's that he's the Uber troll who has absolutely no obligation. Of truth or veracity of any sort to anybody anymore. And he's mutated over the last five years. I'm not enough of a psychologist to understand why. But, you know, five, 10 years ago, Tesla was a cool idea. And he was building really neat stuff and everybody liked him.

• 38:53Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 38:53Speaker 06

  Now he's giving Nazi salutes on TV.

• 38:56Kara Swisher?

  Absolutely. Without, again, with impunity. But Europe might push back. That would be the place you could see it happen.

• 39:02Speaker 06

  It's the only possibility is against, against the Nazi, the most Nazi aspects of his speech. It may very well happen there. And maybe at some point here in the United States, people won't push back legally. But, but, you know, there'll be revulsion at what he does. Anybody who defends him, I ask them to do the salute in front of their children.

• 39:27Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

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• 41:51Kara Swisher?

  Amy, as some of these groups support law enforcement, others see themselves as vigilantes who push back against officers who stand in their way. How do you make sense of these contradictions, Amy? What's the through line of attacking law enforcement and then at the same time, supporting them?

• 42:08Speaker 07

  Right, I think that there is nuance in this movement, but the thing that helps most cleanly explain this is that from the movement as a whole, they kind of draw a line between what they perceive as good law enforcement versus bad law enforcement. And that's very subjective to them, of course. But they see good law enforcement as those they believe are upholding and following their understanding of the Constitution, their understanding of the nation. And those are the ones that they support and are willing to, in their view, protect at protests or some other kinds of events. Law enforcement officers or agencies, especially at the federal level, that they see as defying that mission are the bad guys and must be opposed with equal fervor.

• 42:52Kara Swisher?

  So in that regard, let's talk specifically about immigration. Tess, you've written about some of the paramilitary groups who've been patrolling the borders for decades in some cases. Some seem like they want to work for the Trump administration, some don't. Talk about the border militias, who's patrolling there and what potential issues you expect to see there. And then Paul, I'm going to ask you a question about the legal issues around them in a second, but go ahead, Tess.

• 43:13Speaker 08

  Sure. I mean, the, you know, those groups were certainly very, very excited after Trump won. And, you know, they see a place for themselves in their, in Trump's enforcement actions. And I spoke with the leader of the biggest group, Arizona Recon, who claimed, at least, that he'd been in touch with the Trump administration, and that they were actually in discussions about working together. I mean, that could be bluster, that could be, you know, I think these guys love to claim that they have in with, with people in power to kind of give themselves legitimacy, but certainly that is their belief, you know. And we also saw this even with the Proud Boys recently, since the pardons, where they're very excited and ramped up and talking about real life activity. You know, they're also seeing if there's, there's some way that they could, they could help out or contribute

• 43:58Speaker 08

  to ICE enforcement. And I also think, to kind of go back to your point about the police, and Dr. Kudus, you were absolutely spot on with, with that. You know, we had, for example, Cash Patel on inauguration evening, giving lip service to law enforcement, saying, you know, we support you, we have your back. And within hours later, you know, Trump was signing pardons for hundreds of people who had, who had attacked law enforcement. And so how the GOP and Trump administration is going to have to square that as a party who has historically backed law enforcement with Trump's actions, which will be really interesting.

• 44:35Kara Swisher?

  Right. Well, I think he likes the blue he likes. So Paul, you were Deputy Assistant Secretary of Policy in the Department of Homeland Security during the Bush administration. Talk about the legal issues around these militia groups. The Insurrection Act allows the president to enlist able bodied men of a certain age, but can they be deputized on, to work on behalf of the government at the border? I mean, who's calling the shots if they were doing it themselves before?

• 44:56Speaker 06

  Well, assuming that the law applies and that Trump abides by legal restrictions, he, there is no mechanism by which he can deputize non-employees of the federal government as having law enforcement authority, that is, to lawfully carry guns, exercise the force that police officers are sometimes authorized to exercise in support of their mission to conduct arrests.

• 45:24Speaker 06

  That does not mean that the militia can't find a ready way of supporting the Trump mission through surveillance, through intimidation, through coordination of activity, all of which would be well beyond what has gone before, some of which would almost certainly be lawful, since there's no law against citizen patrols of the desert in Arizona. You and I can go there today and walk around, and if we see people we think are illegal, we can call ICE and say, hey, you know, we think we see something, and they can respond or not. What will really

• 46:04Speaker 06

  be, what will really make the difference is two things. First, the degree to which ICE and other federal law enforcement take that assistance to heart and really implement it. And secondarily, the degree to which state and local law enforcement, who traditionally are on the sidelines of immigration issues, are willing and able to assist. We've already seen a divergence in that, for example, between the response in Texas, where the governor is going to put out the National Guard to help, and the response in Illinois, where the governor, Governor Pritzker essentially yesterday said, we'll do what the law requires

• 46:47Speaker 06

  us to do, but we're not going to do a whitmore.

• 46:50Kara Swisher?

  A thing more.

• 46:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, not a thing more.

• 46:53Kara Swisher?

  Okay. In 2017, President Trump defended the white nationalist protesters at the Unite the Right rally, and Charles feels saying there were some very fine people on both sides. Final question for all of you, let's start with you, Paul. We've seen what happens when some of these groups act with impunity. Where do you see this going, and what can people do to protect themselves this time around?

• 47:12Speaker 06

  Well, I see a diminution of legal limitations, especially at the federal level and in states that are Republican states, not necessarily in red states like New York, or Illinois, or California. Um.

• 47:30Kara Swisher?

  Blue states.

• 47:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, blue states, sorry. Yeah, sorry, red, blue. Yeah, uh, blue states. That, to me, betokens um increased violence of some sort, which to my mind means two things. First, uh, there should be, I hope, vigorous legal pushback by as many people as possible like, like me, trying to prevent these things from happening and maintaining the guardrails of the wall wall. And the second thing is really, it's very sad to say, but um, people who are in at-risk communities, whether it's immigrants or LGBTQ or or African Americans, um, need to think about how they will collectively um protect themselves. And I'm not talking

• 48:16Speaker 06

  necessarily about violence and arming themselves, but about, you know, watching each other's backs and and, you know, it's it's incumbent upon people like me who are not at risk to step up and and do what I can to have their backs on a personal level as well.

• 48:32Kara Swisher?

  Mm hmm. Okay. Amy, uh, and then Tess.

• 48:37Speaker 07

  I I think that the the best we can all do is try to support folks in our local community to to try to send resources where we can to make sure that that folks feel as supported as possible. Um, I think that the average person's ability to to challenge some of the legal precedents that are happening are very limited, but hopefully we can still try to hold our local officials accountable, especially, for example, local sheriffs in border states who have already engaged some with militias in efforts to at least drum up support for anti-immigration activities. And so just just being vocal and and helping people know that they're not alone is one step, but it's a very minimal first step.

• 49:19Kara Swisher?

  Sure is.

• 49:20Speaker 07

  So that we have those resources is the next most important thing, I think.

• 49:24Kara Swisher?

  Where are you in the level of studying this in terms of nervousness, I guess, or looking at what's happening? Because lots of things have come to a head in the United States and then they tend to peter out, but they haven't always, right?

• 49:36Speaker 07

  Right. I mean, I always say that social scientists aren't known for their optimism. And I think that folks doing what I do have to be careful in this moment, but I also think that some of us have to be willing to take some risks. Otherwise, nobody's speaking out about this. Nobody's collecting good data and trying to do work that hopefully will outlive this administration.

• 49:57Kara Swisher?

  What are some of the most dangerous signs you see and what are some of the more promising ones? I hate to have to equalize it, but I shall do that anyway.

• 50:07Speaker 07

  I think some of the most dangerous signs I see are just the rapid action, which we expected in the first week of this administration, but seeing how much is at the whim of executive order, seeing how much of history seems to be being rewritten in the context of that, especially perhaps right now around January 6th. I think the sign of optimism for me is how many people are actually talking about this and trying to say, hey, this is what really happened and we need to keep this in mind. We need to push back against these things. We need to make people aware of how these executive orders or these rollbacks are going to impact them and hopefully get some momentum against some of what we think will be other negative changes going forward.

• 50:52Kara Swisher?

  All right, Tess, why don't you finish up?

• 50:54Speaker 08

  Sure. I mean, I think that, you know, this is exhausting. This is all exhausting. And I think that there's a real risk of people becoming numb to what's happening and also things getting normalized. I think we've already seen it to a degree since the first term administration. Things that shocked us in 2017 don't shock us anymore. You know, I remember when Trump would say, oh, fake news, all caps, and people would kind of... You know, talk about the erosion of democratic norms and now, you know, it doesn't, we don't even blink when we hear that sort of thing. So I think that there is a real risk of things becoming normalized and, and kind of making sure you don't play into that. And as well, you know, we know that the strategy of this administration or the past or, you know, the last time Trump was in power was, you know, Steve Bannon's flooding the zone with shit.

• 51:38Speaker 08

  And this is a strategy to kind of exhaust people and, and overwhelm people where, you know, reporters and researchers are kind of left chasing their tails in circles. So I think, yeah, kind of keeping, you know, keeping tabs on what is and isn't normal and, and not letting the, the kind of window shift.

• 51:58Kara Swisher?

  And, and when you look at that, what do you see? What is the most dangerous thing you've seen? And is in that idea of not letting it shift, what's the most hopeful thing you've seen?

• 52:06Speaker 08

  Well, I guess the most dangerous thing that I, I see is, I guess, the idea of like a feedback loop. When you have the fringes, the far right fringes and the mainstream, both basically singing the same song. The people in power are, you know, and they're both playing off each other. That to me is, is, is the scariest thing because, you know, everyone in the middle gets kind of caught up in it.

• 52:26Kara Swisher?

  And then something you've seen that is shifted? Because most of your stories, these people are not redeemed, you know, that's the Hollywood kind of thing. Have you seen even a sign of that yet?

• 52:38Speaker 08

  I mean, sure, there are people, for example, among the January 6 defendants who do seem genuinely remorseful and don't want to get involved again. There are, there are examples of people who, since 2017, have genuinely left the movement and have gone through, you know, de-radicalization training and, you know, there are, there are stories like that. But I think that, that for me, what's, what's alarming is the normalization and the mainstreaming of, of extremist ideologies.

• 53:05Kara Swisher?

  And is there one person you think is the most dangerous to be paying attention to?

• 53:09Speaker 08

  I'd say probably the most dangerous is Elon Musk.

• 53:12Kara Swisher?

  Because?

• 53:13Speaker 08

  Because I think the scale of his ambitions and the, the amount of power, the, the mouthpiece he has, how he can. Control the algorithms to sway public opinion, the scale of his ambitions as far as it concerns other countries beyond the US. I think that's what makes him particularly dangerous.

• 53:33Speaker 07

  I don't disagree with Tess. I do think that his intersection with Trump makes it even more dangerous because clearly they feed off of each other in strange ways. Trump wants to draw off of Elon's fame and sort of this tech bro status. Elon's be looking for a daddy figure sometimes in Trump and it just makes the whole environment even more toxic and the potential for and the scope, frankly, of the damage is really scary.

• 53:59Kara Swisher?

  All right. I think we'll end on that. Great. He hates Kara Swisher. That's great to know. Good to know.

• 54:05Kara Swisher?

  Anyway, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

• 54:07Speaker 06

  Thank you so much.

• 54:08Speaker 08

  Thank you.

• 54:08Kara Swisher?

  Thank you.

• 54:13Kara Swisher?

  On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castro-Russell, Kateri Yokum, Jolie Myers, Megan Burney, Megan Cunane, and Kalen Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Special thanks to Claire Hyman. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Aruda, and our theme music is by Track academics. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.

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