December 8, 2021 • 39 mins
Robert Evans delves into the deep history of Donald Trump’s ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign, getting on the trail of a wily right wing activist at the heart of the operation.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Before we get into it, be advised that this series
contains bad language and references to violence. To understand what
happened at the Capitol on January six, we need to
(00:22):
zoom out away from the violence, but we're not going far,
just to block away. On a rooftop terrace on Constitution Avenue,
safely back from the violence. A slightly built man in
a checkered blazer is doing a live stream of the
(00:43):
rebellion against an illegitimate government. He's in his mid thirties,
and his crisp white shirt and edgy haircut announced him
as an influencer. As he looks out over the chaos,
he revels in what his influence has unleashed. This is we,
the people of the growing frustrating tunes of the government,
and what's happening now is exactly what I've warned about.
(01:04):
That's not quite true. He hasn't been warning about this day.
He's been planning for it, organizing for it, inciting thousands
upon thousands of people with the lie that the election
was fraudulent. I've said that we need to make fair
elections in transparent county so that the people do not
feel like the last resort is public demonstrations like this.
(01:27):
As he addresses the camera, the scene behind him is escalating.
Rioters are pouring into the US Capital. We are marching through.
Members of Congress are scrambling for safety. Where are you going?
(01:52):
White nationalists Q and on cultists and card carrying militia
members are roaming the hallways. They're hunting elected officials. What
they're doing a darts trying to find her later in
(02:15):
the day. Rioters will even smear their feces on the walls.
I want to say something I don't do avow this.
I do not denounce this. This is completely peaceful, looks
(02:36):
like so far. And there are a couple of agitators
that I obviously donates for. The influencer on the rooftop.
This is the culmination of a life's work. He's the
wily right wing provocateur you've never heard of. But you
can't understand the Capital insurrection without understanding his story. I
(03:00):
was a person who came up with the January sixth idea.
All of this begins with a lie. And that slim,
smartly dressed guy on the rooftop his name is Ali
Alexander and he's the man behind the lie. From the
teams at Cool Zone Media. I heart radio and novel.
(03:23):
This is the Assault on America Episode two, Stop the Steel. Okay,
(03:45):
straight off the bat. The Capitol riot involved tens of
thousands of Trump supporters, including more than eight hundred who
entered the capital itself. It was promoted by the President
of the United States. One the presidential election was rigged,
illegal votes, and then I've taken this White House. We're
going to fight like hell. I'll tell you right now, who,
(04:07):
in turn, was amplified by a vast media network online
and on TV. Voter fraud people voting to quite seven
million votes deleted, so much evidence right in front of
people's eyes. So can we really single out one far
right influencer as the chief architect of the riot? Oh? No,
(04:29):
I think that's fair. That is very fair. That's Luke O'Brien.
He's an investigative journalist who covers political extremism. I'm an
investigative reporter and I have been tracking a network of
bad actors on the political right for the last five years.
In case you're wondering, it's not the easiest beat to cover.
(04:50):
I think it began with my very first story. I
started getting defamed and harassed and threatened, and it's been
that way for uff a decade now. Every story you're
right usually results in some sort of blowback. Blowback is
Luke's jovial way of describing having his personal details leaked
online to thousands of far right accounts, or being deemed
(05:14):
a picture of a handgun with the caption your time
is come. I've covered a lot of the same communities
and can confirm that death threats are sort of de rigor.
The harassment increases exponentially if you do this work and
happen to not be a white dude. So anyway, Luke
was digging into these kinds of networks when he first
(05:36):
came across our man on the rooftop, Ali Alexander. I've
noticed him online and then in I noticed him in
person because I attended a rally in front of the
White House that had been organized by several of Alexander's collaborators.
(05:56):
It's called the Rally for Peace, I believe. And it
was funny because before the rally kicked off, you had
some very angry, very militant Trump supporters who were not
speaking in peaceful terms. There was one guy who was
talking about putting George Soros in a gas chamber. There
(06:17):
was an ultranationalist skinhead group that was doing security, and
Ali Alexander got up on stage and spoke as well.
There he is in the flesh all uh, you know,
turned out in his slick suit on a hunt day,
his hair kind of brushed back in an interesting hairstyle,
(06:37):
and clearly trying to make a go of it as
an influencer. Until this point, Ali Alexander has been more
of a behind the scenes guy, the type of person
the press might refer to as a political operator. But
in two thousands seventeen he starts moving into the spotlight,
appearing on stage next to heavyweight right wing influencers, the
(07:00):
type of social media stars who wield great power on
the right. So you had in mid seen all the
elements of this anti democratic network that Ali Alexander was
a central note of coming together in front of the
White House. Now Alexander isn't the biggest name to speak
on the stage that day, not by a long shot,
(07:22):
but he has something that the others don't, one thing
that distinguishes Ali Alexander from some of the other bat
actors on the political rights. Some of these influencers online,
is that he actually does have some real political operative experience,
going back many years, organizing experience, working on campaigns, setting
(07:45):
up websites, running social media for various Republican candidates. So
prior to Trump running for president, Ali Alexander is moving
around in actually, frankly, some fairly high level Republican circles. Yeah,
there's much more to Alie Alexander than your typical maga
Yahoo mashing the retweet button after every presidential admission. So
(08:09):
where does a guy like Alexander spring from and how
did he end up on that rooftop overlooking chaos on
January six? Arguably more responsible for the violence than any
single person except the President himself. Very early as a child,
I saw it power. I saw it power and influence.
(08:31):
That's Alie Alexander speaking in two thousand nineteen. I guess
it's no surprise he ended up in politics. Alexander was
born in Texas in the mid nineteen eighties. He was
raised by his mom after his dad walked out when
he was two years old. The way Alexander describes it,
he was hooked on politics from the start. I grew
up phone banking for judges, you know, I built websites
(08:53):
for politicians when I was in high school. It was
only natural I was going to be a congressman or
I was going to be a U. S Senator. And
that with the plan. Trouble with the law and a
nasty mug shot killed the dream of high office, and
by two thousand seven, Alexander finds himself unemployed, a college
dropout with convictions for property theft and debit card abuse.
(09:15):
But happily for Alexander, it turns out that none of
that matters because Ali has a superpower. Those websites he
built in high school for Republican politicians, those were just
the start. Young Ali is way ahead of the curve
on all things digital. He's living online before the phrase
even exists. He creates a Twitter account so early that
(09:38):
he secures a prized three letter handled at Ali, and
luckily for Alexander, the Republican Party knows talent when they
say it. They set him to work on the newly
emerging digital arena of politics. Ali will later describe himself
as a pioneer in the field, and he's probably right.
Seven there's about twenty us that we're building websites during
(10:01):
email marketing social media, creating UH profiles and interface with that.
I mean, now there's like four thousand of us. By
two thirteen, he's organizing his own after party at SPAK,
the biggest Republican event of the year. In this video,
he's standing next to Ted Cruz, the newly elected U. S.
Senator from Texas. Let me tell you, the men and
(10:22):
women in this room, you represent power and you represent
the money. Alexander called the party blog bash to celebrate
the digital warriors like him fighting their campaigns online. Clearly
Cruise understands their value. You scare one, you scare the
(10:47):
hell out of Washington. Well that's prophetic. Roll on to
twenty teen, and Alexander has worked on a slew of
Republican campaigns as a digital director. But along the way
he seems to have burned a few bridges in his
(11:08):
native Texas. So he resurfaces in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It's
here that he meets a local writer and publisher called
Lamar White Jr. I kind of like a mosquito in here.
It's Louisiana. Lamar covers politics and state government in Baton Rouge.
(11:31):
So when a guy like Ali arrives in town. Lamar's
radar pings, he seeks out Ali for a drink. I
met him at a bar. It was just this normal
bar in Baton Rouge, and he was with his boyfriend,
so it was a very like, sort of relaxed, you know,
casual getting to know you type of thing. And he
was nothing like the Ali Alexander that emerged in the
(11:53):
Stop to Steal campaign. At this stage, Alexander is just
another political operative trying to build a network in a
new town. He certainly comes across as a political consultant.
There is a personality type, you know, someone who has
probably two or three cell phones and his multiple things
going on at once. And the candidate that he worked
(12:14):
for in Louisiana, by the way, was not someone that
you would define as a right wing ideologue in any respect.
In fact, the candidate he worked for, I would say
twenty years ago, would have been a Democrat. But Alie
Alexander's a political survivor. When the winds change in ten
and Donald Trump takes control of the Republican Party, Alexander
(12:35):
changes his tune in an instant, becoming a true believer
in the Maga cause. Basically, overnight. And that's not the
only evidence of a healthy dose of a moral flexibility
on Alie's part. I mean, the guy doesn't become the
chief architect of an attempted coup just because he's a
Trump convert who knows how to tweet. Alie. Alexander has
(12:58):
another string to his bow, a willingness to get dirty.
Here's Luke O'Brien again. He started doing some work for
this very strange looking group called the Black Conservatives Fund.
And this is essentially it's a political activism type group
that receives dark money. Dark money the scourge of US politics.
(13:20):
This is untraceable cash pumped into the system, usually by
mega donors with somewhat questionable intentions. You can pretty much
rest assured that it's not on the up and up.
Not on the up and up is certainly one way
to describe Alexander's new venture in Louisiana. Alee Alexander is
working for this group and they are targeting Democratic candidates
(13:45):
in different elections around the country, and they're promoting far
right or hard right Republican candidates. And the irony here is,
you know, Alee Alexander's a mixed race man. His mother
is black. His father, he claims from the United Arab
Emirates originally, And you know, he was working with another
(14:05):
black woman on this Black and Service Fund, and a
lot of things they were doing, we're actually disenfranchising black voters.
Here's a typical example. He targeted an incumbent senator, Democratic
Senator in Louisiana, Mary Landrew. She was up for re election.
(14:26):
The Black Conservatives Fund begins infiltrating one of Mary Landrew's
campaign events and recording them. This one was hosted by
Landrew's chief of staff's dad. He happened to be the
mayor of a small town in Louisiana called Apaloosis, and
he made a joke about voting twice. You know, someone
(14:48):
asked him, what if, what if we've already sent in
a mail and vote. He said, oh, we'll show up
the polls anyway and vote again. So the room burst
out laughing. It was very clearly kind of a campaign
trail type joke. If you early voted, go vote again tomorrow.
It's a joke. You here in politics all the time.
(15:08):
Next thing you know, this is being turned into an
attack ad and numerous press releases put out by the
Black Conservatives Fund targeting mary Landrew, saying that the father
of her chief of staff or her campaign manager was
urging voter fraud to take place. He was recommending that
all these black voters, and these are predominantly black voters
(15:30):
that we're talking about here, vote twice. Here's the introduction
to the ad put out by Ali Alexander and the
Black Conservatives Fund. What you're about to hear is shocking,
even for the sad swamp of Democrat politics here in Louisiana.
The man talking is Louisiana State Senator Albert Guillory. His
(15:51):
mournful tone is kind of like a teacher who isn't angry,
just disappointed. The Black Conservatives Fund obtained footage at a
private gathering of the Democrat faithful where the mayor of
Apulusus suggests that people vote twice. Why urge people to
(16:11):
commit voter fraud? With this ad? Ali Alexander is learning
his craft, hinting to Republicans that if the election doesn't
go your way, it must have been stolen. When you
allege the voter fraud is happening in the South and
the Democrats are the ones doing it, well, what you're
saying is that black people are cheating when they're voting somehow,
(16:33):
because the Democratic Party in Southern states is heavily heavily black.
And while Alexander is riling up Louisiana Republicans with false
claims of black voter fraud, he's simultaneously targeting black Democrat
voters with disinformation designed to stop them from turning out
to vote. Here's a deceptively edited robo call he put
(16:54):
out reworking an interview with Mary Landrew to make it
sound like she didn't vote for Barack o'ball in the
twenty twelve election Louisiana. Here is an important last minute
election update US Senator Mary Landrew with US here. I
voted for the Affordable care I did not vote for Obama.
Did you hear that mary Landrew talking to a white
(17:16):
host different than she talks to black voters. I did
not vote for obam What happened next is that the
Republican Party of Louisiana amplifies this propaganda and puts out
statements of its own. And the goal, of course, is
to spread some disinformation and try to take out a
Democratic senator. And so Ali Alexander played an instrumental role
(17:38):
in making that happen, and mary Landrew ended up losing
her election. Lamar White Jr. A veteran of covering Louisiana politics,
also thinks that Alexander had a critical role in handing
mary Landrew's Senate seat to her Republican rival Bill Cassidy. Yes,
I do, I absolutely do. The Black Conservatives Fund made
(17:59):
a couple of pretty big splashes, I would say. And
you can see a photograph of Ali and Bill Cassidy
standing together on election night celebrating his win. So Alie
Alexander maybe swings a senatorial race in Louisiana. Okay, impressive,
but kind of small fry. This series is about a
(18:20):
full blown insurrection in Washington, d C. After all. But
don't worry. He's about to hit the big time. The
thing is he needs a little help with the transition.
At some point in the Trump years, Ali falls in
with a man who's done it all before. A master
of the political dark arts the Loki of us politics.
(18:42):
I have no title, I have no line responsibilities, but
I have access to all the right people. When Roger
Stone starts collaborating with Alie Alexander, it's like a master
meeting a talented apprentice. Stone was working with Trump at
the time as a kind of fixer, or, as Stone
(19:02):
would rather put it, I'm just an fot friend of Trumble.
It's hard to say exactly what Stone was doing for Trump,
but we can take a guess from his background. Roger
Stone goes way back in US politics. I welcome this
(19:23):
kind of examination because people have got to know whether
or not their presidents or crook. Well, I'm not a crook.
He was pulling fast tricks in the Nixon years. They
called it rat fucking back then. The term refers to
all of the underhanded, immoral, or straight up illegal ways
you can screw over your opponent in politics. The Watergate
(19:45):
break in is a classic example, and by the way,
Stone had a role in that as a junior Nixon staffer,
but he was never charged. Roger Stone was forged as
a political operator in those dubious years. He even has
a tattoo of Nixon's on his back. But Stone's real
contribution to this story comes in three simple words, stop
(20:07):
the steel. Roger Stone coined that phrase, stopped the steal in,
and that was during the Republican primary with US tonight
businessman Donald Trump, of New York. Trump was a long
shot candidate. It was a very crowded field Jeb Bush
(20:28):
and Florida. Trump was kind of the non politician who
was making a lot of noise property from then let
me talk quiet at the time when he first cleared
his candidacy and nobody gave him a chance, and then
he started picking off the candidates one by one. So
I think you're on the wrong side of this. If
you're still arguing for a single player. I'm not. I'm not.
I don't think you've heard me. You're having a hard
(20:50):
time tonight. But it still looked like he might not
get the nomination, and so Roger Stone coined this phrase
stop the Steel to basically under in confidence in the
political process. In the Republican primary, there is insurmountable, compelling,
overcoming evidence of fraud, and the idea was, well, if
(21:10):
Trump loses, then clearly this has been stolen, right because
the people want Trump. Accordingly, the chair announces that Donald
Day Trump has been selected as the Republican Party nominee
for President of the United States. The people, as we know,
(21:31):
did want Trump, and he secured the Republican nomination for president.
So in Roger Stone Stopped the Steel campaign was never
rolled out. But after the primary comes the general, and
once again the numbers aren't looking good for Trump. Clinton
head by nine siy, Clinton eleven points and leading Trump
(21:51):
by twelve point. Once again, it looks like it's an
uphill fight. So Donald Trump is again challenging the legitimacy
of the election. Trump and Stone dust off their trustee
slogan stop the Steel. It became far more toxic this phrase,
and far more dangerous at that time, because then it
(22:11):
was about demonizing Hillary Clinton and demonizing liberals, and liberals
are trying to steal this election from Donald Trump, the
Democratic machine, the deep state, all these things started circulating
in the conversation. You could see what they were trying
(22:34):
to do. Back in they were trying to say that
if Trump didn't win, somehow the election was rigged. Trump
himself was using that kind of language in the lead
up to the election because he wasn't sure he was
gonna win. Roger Stone stopped the Steel efforts are more
(22:54):
than simple rhetoric. I think it's essentials. He starts working
with groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.
These are the kind of brutish, armed thugs. We'll hear
more about later in this series. For now, all you
need to know is that they are not professional poll watchers.
(23:21):
Roger Stone was using Stop the Steel to promote sending
pole watchers, as he called it, to go and just,
you know, make sure the election wasn't being stolen. Let's
just send an army of really angry, delusional, probably very
large white men to go and stand outside, you know,
the polls in neighborhoods where a lot of minorities vote,
(23:44):
you know, and make sure they're not stealing the vote.
Pull watchers in Lee County. Tomorrow, the uful watchers are
going to be at polling locations across New Mexico. While
poll watching is legal, intimidating voters is not. Roger Stone's
key discovery is that baseless conspiracy theories about election integrity
are a huge hit with Trump space. As Trump heads
(24:05):
for the general election, there's more and more rhetoric from
the Trump camp about greaked elections, cheating Democrats, and widespread
voting fraud. But once again, the full stop the Steel
campaign isn't needed. Trump surprises everyone, including himself, by taking
(24:30):
the White House. Sorry to keep you waiting, complicated, business, complicate.
Stop the steel is put on ice. You don't shout
about election fraud when you win. But it turns out
that stop the steel is too powerful a weapon to
lay dormant for long. This came back in. It came back,
(24:53):
not as how Ali Alexander got involved. Was stopped the
steel breaking news in Florida. The counting is over in
the eighteen midterm elections. There's an extremely close race in Florida.
Republican Rhonda Santis is still ahead of Democrat Andrew Gillam
by only four tenths of a percent. It's so close,
in fact, that a recount is required by law. The
(25:15):
situation became kind of a microcosm foreshadowing of what would
happen in the presidential election. The voting on election day
favors the Republican candidate ron De Santis, but the mail
in ballots counted later than the election day ballots cast
in person favored the Democrat Andrew Gillim. This phenomenon is
(25:35):
known as the blue shift. It's called that because the
result of the election starts red Republican and gradually moves
to blue Democrat. There are many reasons why Democrats are
more likely to vote by mail than Republicans, but the
discrepancy creates just enough ambiguity for agitators like Alexander to
get to work. Ali Alexander decided, Okay, let's deploy the
(25:58):
stop the Steel campaign again the phrase, but also he
had the social media presence. This is important because Roger Stone,
for all of his wiles and experience, never understood social media.
Like Ali Alexander. It's a generational thing. Stone has some reach,
but even his rat fucking days never prepared him for
(26:19):
the cesspools of social media. Alexander, on the other hand,
came of age politically on Twitter. In his hands, stop
the Steel is a far more powerful weapon than it
ever was for Stone. He started tweeting out a stop
the Steel hashtag. He had his network who were boosting
(26:43):
this stop the Steel campaign that Alexander had launched in
They all jumped in. President Trump just tweeted an unsubstantiated
accusation trying to steal too big elections in Florida. We
are watching closely, he writes. Alexander studied organizing an actual
protest outside the election center down in Florida where where
(27:05):
the recount was happening, and guests who showed up a
lot of the same type of people who showed up
on January six. These people are extremists and they're kind
of passing in normal society, and they all showed up
in to stop the steel down in Florida, and it worked,
by the way, it worked. About fifteen minutes ago, I
(27:29):
spoke with Andrew Gillham and he very graciously conceded the election.
When the votes are recounted, the Republican Ron De Santis
is declared the winner. He was a very formidable opponent
and I wish him well in his future endeavors. Maybe
the recount would have always favored to Santis. But if
you're counting votes with an angry right wing mob waiting
(27:51):
just outside the front door, well who knows what might happen.
And the crazy thing is for Alexander, the result itself
isn't even the main rise. What was successful about it
for them was that Ali Alexander and his group were
able to almost immediately get a pretty significant turnout on
(28:11):
the ground from what they were doing online. So they
had figured out how to weaponize social media use it
to organize an actual protest and get people to show
up with signs angry people who just believed that the
Democrats were stealing the election because they've seen it on
Twitter and they've seen enough people tweeting about it. That
(28:32):
was a very successful field test for what he would
end up doing in What does he end up doing?
In by Alexander has completed the move from back room
operator to social media influencer. He grows his following on
(28:53):
Twitter and Instagram by posting increasingly incendiary content. He posts
the kind of attacks even Trump didn't go near. Kamala
Harris doesn't count as black because she's only half Jamaican.
Joe Biden secretly has Parkinson's disease, and of course he
lays the groundwork for the Stop the Steel campaign, raising funds,
(29:18):
organizing logistics, readying his network of followers. Lamar White Jr.
The investigative reporter from Louisiana, checked in with his one
time acquaintance to try and figure out what was going on.
I had contact with him right after the election. I
(29:41):
noticed that there was a Stop the Steel protest that
was planned for Baton Rouge, which I've frankly found a
little silly considering that Donald Trump won Louisiana by like
nineteen points. He told me when we spoke that he
was planning these events in all fifty states, that that
was next on his agenda, that he was not going
to relent, And he made it seem as if what
(30:04):
he was doing was perfectly reasonable and that the only
thing he really cared about was ensuring election integrity, and
he had these legitimate questions about election integrity. I mean,
this is frankly, this is b s. Soon after election,
Trump's own Homeland Security officials declare it the most secure
election in US history. At least eighty six lawsuits are
(30:26):
brought by the Trump campaign and their allies, claiming instances
of election fraud. One after the other. They're swatted down
in courts around the country, many thrown out by Trump
appointed judges. Ali Alexander is unfhased. He had been planning
to do this for months before, so regardless of what
the outcome was if Trump lost, no matter what combination
(30:48):
of states came together to give him that loss, Ali
was going to do this anyway. Ali spends November and
December organizing protests all over the Wes. He speaks at
many of them. His rhetoric ratcheting up as he spreads
more and more lies. They say there's a cue going on,
(31:13):
and there is Trump got I believe eighty million votes.
After organizing NonStop rallies throughout the winter, Alexander decides on
a final push, one last effort to overturn the national election.
The date he lands on January six. January six, Alexander
(31:38):
leverages all his connections, all his experience as an organizer.
His skill is a propagandist. He liaises with Trump campaigners,
with grassroots organizers, with far right extremists, and with alt
right influencers. Piece by piece, he pulls together the mother
of all maga rallies. At twelve pm on January six,
(31:59):
Donald Trump addresses a shivering crowd outside the White House.
Alie Alexander sits in the front row. We will never
give up. We will never concede. It doesn't happen. You
don't concede. Where there's that in my head? At least,
he smiles when he hears this line. And to use
a favorite term that all of you people really came
(32:22):
up with, we will stop the steel. Alexander has pulled
some political tricks before now, but this is the biggest
of them all. He's rolling out a stop the Steel
campaign that has been prepared for every previous election in
Donald Trump's political career. Only now is it needed. And
(32:45):
Alie Alexander is the man at the helm. He's the guy.
He's the guy who who drove this car to stop
the steel car. That is what led to January six
more than anything else, that mass disinformation campaign that he
was driving. And it's replicated on the other side. This
(33:08):
is we the people, the growing frustrations of the governments.
Alie Alexander's live stream on the rooftop overlooking the Capital
riot is the zenith of his career. Most of the
rioters have probably never heard of him, but they've heard
of Stopped the Steel. It's why they were here. But
within days of the riot, something strange happens to Alexander
(33:31):
for the first time in his adult life. He stops posting.
The political operator with multiple phones, running dozens of accounts,
bombarding millions of Americans with distortions, half truths and lies
is d platformed by almost every social media site on
the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. One by one, Allie Alexander's
(33:54):
accounts are suspended. Even parlor beloved by the Right for
its lack of content moderation, and is knocked offline by
its hosting partner Amazon. The only platform that will still
take him is a streaming site mainly used by gamers.
Judging from Ali's new content, he doesn't take his d
platform ing well. My entire life is over. They have
(34:17):
ruined my earthly life. They have totally ruined it. Five
people died at the Capitol riot that Alexander worked so
hard to incite. Yet he's full of pity for himself
and anger at the social media bosses who took away
his toys. And he's filming these these videos, these live
streams in the backseat of a car, kind of you know,
rumbling through the dark to some undisclosed location like he's
(34:41):
you know, he's on the lamb. I have lost my
cash app, I have lost my PayPal, I've lost my Venmo.
Please send money. I'm thinking that he's still on the grift,
you know, the grift is baked into his soul at
this point, right because I've seen him do this before,
where he talking about I need money, I need it
(35:02):
right away to pay for my security team. My life
is in danger, and there's never really been any evidence
of that. He's never produced any evidence to back up
anything he's saying. My first concern is making sure that
I have full time security with me. That means into
every bathroom that I go to. From now until the
rest of my life, I'll probably never get to hang
(35:22):
out with my dog again. Besides the self pity, Alexander
craves revenge. I will unleash a legion of angels to
bring hell to our enemies. I pray that I am
the tool to stab these mother fucker's. You might be
(35:46):
tempted to look at somebody like Alexander and dismiss him
as a weird sight show a grifter into charlatan, but
that would be a huge mistake. I hate to say it,
but when Ali Alexander threatens revenge, we need to take
him seriously, especially given the militant nature of his fan base.
That you had a vast network of extremists, many of
(36:10):
them anti democratic activists who are actually trying to destroy
democracy in America because they know that democracy in a
multiracial country like this is a losing proposition for them.
And Ali Alexander was one of the main people behind that.
He was one of the ringleaders. Unless we do something
(36:33):
about it. Now, it's going to come back, and it's
going to be uglier. I know that. I do think
he'll be back. I really do. The case of Ali
Alexander represents both a problem and an imbalance in our
(36:54):
justice system. As of the writing of this episode, Ali
has not been charged with any crime for deliberately inciting
a riot that led to several deaths, and indeed, he's
back on his game, broadcasting on an encrypted app used
by many on the right. Now. One might argue if
he were to be charged that it would set a
dangerous precedent, It might make organizing unsafe for a variety
(37:17):
of people across the political spectrum, but that's already the case.
Left wing activists are regularly charged with felonies for organizing
protests where no one dies. In September six, socialist organizers
were slammed with a bevy of charges and in some cases,
threatened with up to forty eight years in prison for
(37:38):
organizing protests in Aurora, Colorado, where no one was killed
or seriously injured. They were charged with kidnapping because the
protests surrounded a police station and thus imprisoned officers. These
charges were dropped months later, but the case is ongoing.
In July, a test organizer in San Louis Obispo, California,
(38:03):
was charged with five crimes, including felony riot, for leading
protesters to briefly block a highway. And on January one,
the FBI arrested and charged a leftist activist who had
fought against ISIS in Syria and who tried to organize
an armed left wing counter rally to defend against a
far right attack he believed was coming. After January six,
(38:26):
he was sentenced to three and a half years. That
last one may seem like it crosses a line for you,
but in August one, failed comedian Jason left Cowitz stood
up at an anti mask rally in Santa Monica and
held up a list of the names and addresses of
every Los Angeles City Council member. He screamed, you want
(38:46):
to feel intimidated, We're coming to your homes. Were coming
to you now. He later added, quote civil war, Civil
war is coming. Get your guns. Left Cowitz, like Alley Alexander,
has not been charged with any crime. The FBI has
not shown up at his door to confiscate his weapons,
(39:07):
and they never will coming up. An episode three, a
radical far right militia group is spurred on by Alley
Alexander's lies and takes drastic action. They've gotten the gallows
(39:28):
set upside the Capitol building. It's trying to start fucking
using them. They're throwing your nets, they're freaking shooting people
are payballs, but we're in here. Everything we fucking trained
for fucking gets some In the next episode of The
Assault on America, we're in the fucking capital
Before we get into it, be advised that this series
contains bad language and references to violence. To understand what
happened at the Capitol on January six, we need to
(00:22):
zoom out away from the violence, but we're not going far,
just to block away. On a rooftop terrace on Constitution Avenue,
safely back from the violence. A slightly built man in
a checkered blazer is doing a live stream of the
(00:43):
rebellion against an illegitimate government. He's in his mid thirties,
and his crisp white shirt and edgy haircut announced him
as an influencer. As he looks out over the chaos,
he revels in what his influence has unleashed. This is we,
the people of the growing frustrating tunes of the government,
and what's happening now is exactly what I've warned about.
(01:04):
That's not quite true. He hasn't been warning about this day.
He's been planning for it, organizing for it, inciting thousands
upon thousands of people with the lie that the election
was fraudulent. I've said that we need to make fair
elections in transparent county so that the people do not
feel like the last resort is public demonstrations like this.
(01:27):
As he addresses the camera, the scene behind him is escalating.
Rioters are pouring into the US Capital. We are marching through.
Members of Congress are scrambling for safety. Where are you going?
(01:52):
White nationalists Q and on cultists and card carrying militia
members are roaming the hallways. They're hunting elected officials. What
they're doing a darts trying to find her later in
(02:15):
the day. Rioters will even smear their feces on the walls.
I want to say something I don't do avow this.
I do not denounce this. This is completely peaceful, looks
(02:36):
like so far. And there are a couple of agitators
that I obviously donates for. The influencer on the rooftop.
This is the culmination of a life's work. He's the
wily right wing provocateur you've never heard of. But you
can't understand the Capital insurrection without understanding his story. I
(03:00):
was a person who came up with the January sixth idea.
All of this begins with a lie. And that slim,
smartly dressed guy on the rooftop his name is Ali
Alexander and he's the man behind the lie. From the
teams at Cool Zone Media. I heart radio and novel.
(03:23):
This is the Assault on America Episode two, Stop the Steel. Okay,
(03:45):
straight off the bat. The Capitol riot involved tens of
thousands of Trump supporters, including more than eight hundred who
entered the capital itself. It was promoted by the President
of the United States. One the presidential election was rigged,
illegal votes, and then I've taken this White House. We're
going to fight like hell. I'll tell you right now, who,
(04:07):
in turn, was amplified by a vast media network online
and on TV. Voter fraud people voting to quite seven
million votes deleted, so much evidence right in front of
people's eyes. So can we really single out one far
right influencer as the chief architect of the riot? Oh? No,
(04:29):
I think that's fair. That is very fair. That's Luke O'Brien.
He's an investigative journalist who covers political extremism. I'm an
investigative reporter and I have been tracking a network of
bad actors on the political right for the last five years.
In case you're wondering, it's not the easiest beat to cover.
(04:50):
I think it began with my very first story. I
started getting defamed and harassed and threatened, and it's been
that way for uff a decade now. Every story you're
right usually results in some sort of blowback. Blowback is
Luke's jovial way of describing having his personal details leaked
online to thousands of far right accounts, or being deemed
(05:14):
a picture of a handgun with the caption your time
is come. I've covered a lot of the same communities
and can confirm that death threats are sort of de rigor.
The harassment increases exponentially if you do this work and
happen to not be a white dude. So anyway, Luke
was digging into these kinds of networks when he first
(05:36):
came across our man on the rooftop, Ali Alexander. I've
noticed him online and then in I noticed him in
person because I attended a rally in front of the
White House that had been organized by several of Alexander's collaborators.
(05:56):
It's called the Rally for Peace, I believe. And it
was funny because before the rally kicked off, you had
some very angry, very militant Trump supporters who were not
speaking in peaceful terms. There was one guy who was
talking about putting George Soros in a gas chamber. There
(06:17):
was an ultranationalist skinhead group that was doing security, and
Ali Alexander got up on stage and spoke as well.
There he is in the flesh all uh, you know,
turned out in his slick suit on a hunt day,
his hair kind of brushed back in an interesting hairstyle,
(06:37):
and clearly trying to make a go of it as
an influencer. Until this point, Ali Alexander has been more
of a behind the scenes guy, the type of person
the press might refer to as a political operator. But
in two thousands seventeen he starts moving into the spotlight,
appearing on stage next to heavyweight right wing influencers, the
(07:00):
type of social media stars who wield great power on
the right. So you had in mid seen all the
elements of this anti democratic network that Ali Alexander was
a central note of coming together in front of the
White House. Now Alexander isn't the biggest name to speak
on the stage that day, not by a long shot,
(07:22):
but he has something that the others don't, one thing
that distinguishes Ali Alexander from some of the other bat
actors on the political rights. Some of these influencers online,
is that he actually does have some real political operative experience,
going back many years, organizing experience, working on campaigns, setting
(07:45):
up websites, running social media for various Republican candidates. So
prior to Trump running for president, Ali Alexander is moving
around in actually, frankly, some fairly high level Republican circles. Yeah,
there's much more to Alie Alexander than your typical maga
Yahoo mashing the retweet button after every presidential admission. So
(08:09):
where does a guy like Alexander spring from and how
did he end up on that rooftop overlooking chaos on
January six? Arguably more responsible for the violence than any
single person except the President himself. Very early as a child,
I saw it power. I saw it power and influence.
(08:31):
That's Alie Alexander speaking in two thousand nineteen. I guess
it's no surprise he ended up in politics. Alexander was
born in Texas in the mid nineteen eighties. He was
raised by his mom after his dad walked out when
he was two years old. The way Alexander describes it,
he was hooked on politics from the start. I grew
up phone banking for judges, you know, I built websites
(08:53):
for politicians when I was in high school. It was
only natural I was going to be a congressman or
I was going to be a U. S Senator. And
that with the plan. Trouble with the law and a
nasty mug shot killed the dream of high office, and
by two thousand seven, Alexander finds himself unemployed, a college
dropout with convictions for property theft and debit card abuse.
(09:15):
But happily for Alexander, it turns out that none of
that matters because Ali has a superpower. Those websites he
built in high school for Republican politicians, those were just
the start. Young Ali is way ahead of the curve
on all things digital. He's living online before the phrase
even exists. He creates a Twitter account so early that
(09:38):
he secures a prized three letter handled at Ali, and
luckily for Alexander, the Republican Party knows talent when they
say it. They set him to work on the newly
emerging digital arena of politics. Ali will later describe himself
as a pioneer in the field, and he's probably right.
Seven there's about twenty us that we're building websites during
(10:01):
email marketing social media, creating UH profiles and interface with that.
I mean, now there's like four thousand of us. By
two thirteen, he's organizing his own after party at SPAK,
the biggest Republican event of the year. In this video,
he's standing next to Ted Cruz, the newly elected U. S.
Senator from Texas. Let me tell you, the men and
(10:22):
women in this room, you represent power and you represent
the money. Alexander called the party blog bash to celebrate
the digital warriors like him fighting their campaigns online. Clearly
Cruise understands their value. You scare one, you scare the
(10:47):
hell out of Washington. Well that's prophetic. Roll on to
twenty teen, and Alexander has worked on a slew of
Republican campaigns as a digital director. But along the way
he seems to have burned a few bridges in his
(11:08):
native Texas. So he resurfaces in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It's
here that he meets a local writer and publisher called
Lamar White Jr. I kind of like a mosquito in here.
It's Louisiana. Lamar covers politics and state government in Baton Rouge.
(11:31):
So when a guy like Ali arrives in town. Lamar's
radar pings, he seeks out Ali for a drink. I
met him at a bar. It was just this normal
bar in Baton Rouge, and he was with his boyfriend,
so it was a very like, sort of relaxed, you know,
casual getting to know you type of thing. And he
was nothing like the Ali Alexander that emerged in the
(11:53):
Stop to Steal campaign. At this stage, Alexander is just
another political operative trying to build a network in a
new town. He certainly comes across as a political consultant.
There is a personality type, you know, someone who has
probably two or three cell phones and his multiple things
going on at once. And the candidate that he worked
(12:14):
for in Louisiana, by the way, was not someone that
you would define as a right wing ideologue in any respect.
In fact, the candidate he worked for, I would say
twenty years ago, would have been a Democrat. But Alie
Alexander's a political survivor. When the winds change in ten
and Donald Trump takes control of the Republican Party, Alexander
(12:35):
changes his tune in an instant, becoming a true believer
in the Maga cause. Basically, overnight. And that's not the
only evidence of a healthy dose of a moral flexibility
on Alie's part. I mean, the guy doesn't become the
chief architect of an attempted coup just because he's a
Trump convert who knows how to tweet. Alie. Alexander has
(12:58):
another string to his bow, a willingness to get dirty.
Here's Luke O'Brien again. He started doing some work for
this very strange looking group called the Black Conservatives Fund.
And this is essentially it's a political activism type group
that receives dark money. Dark money the scourge of US politics.
(13:20):
This is untraceable cash pumped into the system, usually by
mega donors with somewhat questionable intentions. You can pretty much
rest assured that it's not on the up and up.
Not on the up and up is certainly one way
to describe Alexander's new venture in Louisiana. Alee Alexander is
working for this group and they are targeting Democratic candidates
(13:45):
in different elections around the country, and they're promoting far
right or hard right Republican candidates. And the irony here is,
you know, Alee Alexander's a mixed race man. His mother
is black. His father, he claims from the United Arab
Emirates originally, And you know, he was working with another
(14:05):
black woman on this Black and Service Fund, and a
lot of things they were doing, we're actually disenfranchising black voters.
Here's a typical example. He targeted an incumbent senator, Democratic
Senator in Louisiana, Mary Landrew. She was up for re election.
(14:26):
The Black Conservatives Fund begins infiltrating one of Mary Landrew's
campaign events and recording them. This one was hosted by
Landrew's chief of staff's dad. He happened to be the
mayor of a small town in Louisiana called Apaloosis, and
he made a joke about voting twice. You know, someone
(14:48):
asked him, what if, what if we've already sent in
a mail and vote. He said, oh, we'll show up
the polls anyway and vote again. So the room burst
out laughing. It was very clearly kind of a campaign
trail type joke. If you early voted, go vote again tomorrow.
It's a joke. You here in politics all the time.
(15:08):
Next thing you know, this is being turned into an
attack ad and numerous press releases put out by the
Black Conservatives Fund targeting mary Landrew, saying that the father
of her chief of staff or her campaign manager was
urging voter fraud to take place. He was recommending that
all these black voters, and these are predominantly black voters
(15:30):
that we're talking about here, vote twice. Here's the introduction
to the ad put out by Ali Alexander and the
Black Conservatives Fund. What you're about to hear is shocking,
even for the sad swamp of Democrat politics here in Louisiana.
The man talking is Louisiana State Senator Albert Guillory. His
(15:51):
mournful tone is kind of like a teacher who isn't angry,
just disappointed. The Black Conservatives Fund obtained footage at a
private gathering of the Democrat faithful where the mayor of
Apulusus suggests that people vote twice. Why urge people to
(16:11):
commit voter fraud? With this ad? Ali Alexander is learning
his craft, hinting to Republicans that if the election doesn't
go your way, it must have been stolen. When you
allege the voter fraud is happening in the South and
the Democrats are the ones doing it, well, what you're
saying is that black people are cheating when they're voting somehow,
(16:33):
because the Democratic Party in Southern states is heavily heavily black.
And while Alexander is riling up Louisiana Republicans with false
claims of black voter fraud, he's simultaneously targeting black Democrat
voters with disinformation designed to stop them from turning out
to vote. Here's a deceptively edited robo call he put
(16:54):
out reworking an interview with Mary Landrew to make it
sound like she didn't vote for Barack o'ball in the
twenty twelve election Louisiana. Here is an important last minute
election update US Senator Mary Landrew with US here. I
voted for the Affordable care I did not vote for Obama.
Did you hear that mary Landrew talking to a white
(17:16):
host different than she talks to black voters. I did
not vote for obam What happened next is that the
Republican Party of Louisiana amplifies this propaganda and puts out
statements of its own. And the goal, of course, is
to spread some disinformation and try to take out a
Democratic senator. And so Ali Alexander played an instrumental role
(17:38):
in making that happen, and mary Landrew ended up losing
her election. Lamar White Jr. A veteran of covering Louisiana politics,
also thinks that Alexander had a critical role in handing
mary Landrew's Senate seat to her Republican rival Bill Cassidy. Yes,
I do, I absolutely do. The Black Conservatives Fund made
(17:59):
a couple of pretty big splashes, I would say. And
you can see a photograph of Ali and Bill Cassidy
standing together on election night celebrating his win. So Alie
Alexander maybe swings a senatorial race in Louisiana. Okay, impressive,
but kind of small fry. This series is about a
(18:20):
full blown insurrection in Washington, d C. After all. But
don't worry. He's about to hit the big time. The
thing is he needs a little help with the transition.
At some point in the Trump years, Ali falls in
with a man who's done it all before. A master
of the political dark arts the Loki of us politics.
(18:42):
I have no title, I have no line responsibilities, but
I have access to all the right people. When Roger
Stone starts collaborating with Alie Alexander, it's like a master
meeting a talented apprentice. Stone was working with Trump at
the time as a kind of fixer, or, as Stone
(19:02):
would rather put it, I'm just an fot friend of Trumble.
It's hard to say exactly what Stone was doing for Trump,
but we can take a guess from his background. Roger
Stone goes way back in US politics. I welcome this
(19:23):
kind of examination because people have got to know whether
or not their presidents or crook. Well, I'm not a crook.
He was pulling fast tricks in the Nixon years. They
called it rat fucking back then. The term refers to
all of the underhanded, immoral, or straight up illegal ways
you can screw over your opponent in politics. The Watergate
(19:45):
break in is a classic example, and by the way,
Stone had a role in that as a junior Nixon staffer,
but he was never charged. Roger Stone was forged as
a political operator in those dubious years. He even has
a tattoo of Nixon's on his back. But Stone's real
contribution to this story comes in three simple words, stop
(20:07):
the steel. Roger Stone coined that phrase, stopped the steal in,
and that was during the Republican primary with US tonight
businessman Donald Trump, of New York. Trump was a long
shot candidate. It was a very crowded field Jeb Bush
(20:28):
and Florida. Trump was kind of the non politician who
was making a lot of noise property from then let
me talk quiet at the time when he first cleared
his candidacy and nobody gave him a chance, and then
he started picking off the candidates one by one. So
I think you're on the wrong side of this. If
you're still arguing for a single player. I'm not. I'm not.
I don't think you've heard me. You're having a hard
(20:50):
time tonight. But it still looked like he might not
get the nomination, and so Roger Stone coined this phrase
stop the Steel to basically under in confidence in the
political process. In the Republican primary, there is insurmountable, compelling,
overcoming evidence of fraud, and the idea was, well, if
(21:10):
Trump loses, then clearly this has been stolen, right because
the people want Trump. Accordingly, the chair announces that Donald
Day Trump has been selected as the Republican Party nominee
for President of the United States. The people, as we know,
(21:31):
did want Trump, and he secured the Republican nomination for president.
So in Roger Stone Stopped the Steel campaign was never
rolled out. But after the primary comes the general, and
once again the numbers aren't looking good for Trump. Clinton
head by nine siy, Clinton eleven points and leading Trump
(21:51):
by twelve point. Once again, it looks like it's an
uphill fight. So Donald Trump is again challenging the legitimacy
of the election. Trump and Stone dust off their trustee
slogan stop the Steel. It became far more toxic this phrase,
and far more dangerous at that time, because then it
(22:11):
was about demonizing Hillary Clinton and demonizing liberals, and liberals
are trying to steal this election from Donald Trump, the
Democratic machine, the deep state, all these things started circulating
in the conversation. You could see what they were trying
(22:34):
to do. Back in they were trying to say that
if Trump didn't win, somehow the election was rigged. Trump
himself was using that kind of language in the lead
up to the election because he wasn't sure he was
gonna win. Roger Stone stopped the Steel efforts are more
(22:54):
than simple rhetoric. I think it's essentials. He starts working
with groups like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.
These are the kind of brutish, armed thugs. We'll hear
more about later in this series. For now, all you
need to know is that they are not professional poll watchers.
(23:21):
Roger Stone was using Stop the Steel to promote sending
pole watchers, as he called it, to go and just,
you know, make sure the election wasn't being stolen. Let's
just send an army of really angry, delusional, probably very
large white men to go and stand outside, you know,
the polls in neighborhoods where a lot of minorities vote,
(23:44):
you know, and make sure they're not stealing the vote.
Pull watchers in Lee County. Tomorrow, the uful watchers are
going to be at polling locations across New Mexico. While
poll watching is legal, intimidating voters is not. Roger Stone's
key discovery is that baseless conspiracy theories about election integrity
are a huge hit with Trump space. As Trump heads
(24:05):
for the general election, there's more and more rhetoric from
the Trump camp about greaked elections, cheating Democrats, and widespread
voting fraud. But once again, the full stop the Steel
campaign isn't needed. Trump surprises everyone, including himself, by taking
(24:30):
the White House. Sorry to keep you waiting, complicated, business, complicate.
Stop the steel is put on ice. You don't shout
about election fraud when you win. But it turns out
that stop the steel is too powerful a weapon to
lay dormant for long. This came back in. It came back,
(24:53):
not as how Ali Alexander got involved. Was stopped the
steel breaking news in Florida. The counting is over in
the eighteen midterm elections. There's an extremely close race in Florida.
Republican Rhonda Santis is still ahead of Democrat Andrew Gillam
by only four tenths of a percent. It's so close,
in fact, that a recount is required by law. The
(25:15):
situation became kind of a microcosm foreshadowing of what would
happen in the presidential election. The voting on election day
favors the Republican candidate ron De Santis, but the mail
in ballots counted later than the election day ballots cast
in person favored the Democrat Andrew Gillim. This phenomenon is
(25:35):
known as the blue shift. It's called that because the
result of the election starts red Republican and gradually moves
to blue Democrat. There are many reasons why Democrats are
more likely to vote by mail than Republicans, but the
discrepancy creates just enough ambiguity for agitators like Alexander to
get to work. Ali Alexander decided, Okay, let's deploy the
(25:58):
stop the Steel campaign again the phrase, but also he
had the social media presence. This is important because Roger Stone,
for all of his wiles and experience, never understood social media.
Like Ali Alexander. It's a generational thing. Stone has some reach,
but even his rat fucking days never prepared him for
(26:19):
the cesspools of social media. Alexander, on the other hand,
came of age politically on Twitter. In his hands, stop
the Steel is a far more powerful weapon than it
ever was for Stone. He started tweeting out a stop
the Steel hashtag. He had his network who were boosting
(26:43):
this stop the Steel campaign that Alexander had launched in
They all jumped in. President Trump just tweeted an unsubstantiated
accusation trying to steal too big elections in Florida. We
are watching closely, he writes. Alexander studied organizing an actual
protest outside the election center down in Florida where where
(27:05):
the recount was happening, and guests who showed up a
lot of the same type of people who showed up
on January six. These people are extremists and they're kind
of passing in normal society, and they all showed up
in to stop the steel down in Florida, and it worked,
by the way, it worked. About fifteen minutes ago, I
(27:29):
spoke with Andrew Gillham and he very graciously conceded the election.
When the votes are recounted, the Republican Ron De Santis
is declared the winner. He was a very formidable opponent
and I wish him well in his future endeavors. Maybe
the recount would have always favored to Santis. But if
you're counting votes with an angry right wing mob waiting
(27:51):
just outside the front door, well who knows what might happen.
And the crazy thing is for Alexander, the result itself
isn't even the main rise. What was successful about it
for them was that Ali Alexander and his group were
able to almost immediately get a pretty significant turnout on
(28:11):
the ground from what they were doing online. So they
had figured out how to weaponize social media use it
to organize an actual protest and get people to show
up with signs angry people who just believed that the
Democrats were stealing the election because they've seen it on
Twitter and they've seen enough people tweeting about it. That
(28:32):
was a very successful field test for what he would
end up doing in What does he end up doing?
In by Alexander has completed the move from back room
operator to social media influencer. He grows his following on
(28:53):
Twitter and Instagram by posting increasingly incendiary content. He posts
the kind of attacks even Trump didn't go near. Kamala
Harris doesn't count as black because she's only half Jamaican.
Joe Biden secretly has Parkinson's disease, and of course he
lays the groundwork for the Stop the Steel campaign, raising funds,
(29:18):
organizing logistics, readying his network of followers. Lamar White Jr.
The investigative reporter from Louisiana, checked in with his one
time acquaintance to try and figure out what was going on.
I had contact with him right after the election. I
(29:41):
noticed that there was a Stop the Steel protest that
was planned for Baton Rouge, which I've frankly found a
little silly considering that Donald Trump won Louisiana by like
nineteen points. He told me when we spoke that he
was planning these events in all fifty states, that that
was next on his agenda, that he was not going
to relent, And he made it seem as if what
(30:04):
he was doing was perfectly reasonable and that the only
thing he really cared about was ensuring election integrity, and
he had these legitimate questions about election integrity. I mean,
this is frankly, this is b s. Soon after election,
Trump's own Homeland Security officials declare it the most secure
election in US history. At least eighty six lawsuits are
(30:26):
brought by the Trump campaign and their allies, claiming instances
of election fraud. One after the other. They're swatted down
in courts around the country, many thrown out by Trump
appointed judges. Ali Alexander is unfhased. He had been planning
to do this for months before, so regardless of what
the outcome was if Trump lost, no matter what combination
(30:48):
of states came together to give him that loss, Ali
was going to do this anyway. Ali spends November and
December organizing protests all over the Wes. He speaks at
many of them. His rhetoric ratcheting up as he spreads
more and more lies. They say there's a cue going on,
(31:13):
and there is Trump got I believe eighty million votes.
After organizing NonStop rallies throughout the winter, Alexander decides on
a final push, one last effort to overturn the national election.
The date he lands on January six. January six, Alexander
(31:38):
leverages all his connections, all his experience as an organizer.
His skill is a propagandist. He liaises with Trump campaigners,
with grassroots organizers, with far right extremists, and with alt
right influencers. Piece by piece, he pulls together the mother
of all maga rallies. At twelve pm on January six,
(31:59):
Donald Trump addresses a shivering crowd outside the White House.
Alie Alexander sits in the front row. We will never
give up. We will never concede. It doesn't happen. You
don't concede. Where there's that in my head? At least,
he smiles when he hears this line. And to use
a favorite term that all of you people really came
(32:22):
up with, we will stop the steel. Alexander has pulled
some political tricks before now, but this is the biggest
of them all. He's rolling out a stop the Steel
campaign that has been prepared for every previous election in
Donald Trump's political career. Only now is it needed. And
(32:45):
Alie Alexander is the man at the helm. He's the guy.
He's the guy who who drove this car to stop
the steel car. That is what led to January six
more than anything else, that mass disinformation campaign that he
was driving. And it's replicated on the other side. This
(33:08):
is we the people, the growing frustrations of the governments.
Alie Alexander's live stream on the rooftop overlooking the Capital
riot is the zenith of his career. Most of the
rioters have probably never heard of him, but they've heard
of Stopped the Steel. It's why they were here. But
within days of the riot, something strange happens to Alexander
(33:31):
for the first time in his adult life. He stops posting.
The political operator with multiple phones, running dozens of accounts,
bombarding millions of Americans with distortions, half truths and lies
is d platformed by almost every social media site on
the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. One by one, Allie Alexander's
(33:54):
accounts are suspended. Even parlor beloved by the Right for
its lack of content moderation, and is knocked offline by
its hosting partner Amazon. The only platform that will still
take him is a streaming site mainly used by gamers.
Judging from Ali's new content, he doesn't take his d
platform ing well. My entire life is over. They have
(34:17):
ruined my earthly life. They have totally ruined it. Five
people died at the Capitol riot that Alexander worked so
hard to incite. Yet he's full of pity for himself
and anger at the social media bosses who took away
his toys. And he's filming these these videos, these live
streams in the backseat of a car, kind of you know,
rumbling through the dark to some undisclosed location like he's
(34:41):
you know, he's on the lamb. I have lost my
cash app, I have lost my PayPal, I've lost my Venmo.
Please send money. I'm thinking that he's still on the grift,
you know, the grift is baked into his soul at
this point, right because I've seen him do this before,
where he talking about I need money, I need it
(35:02):
right away to pay for my security team. My life
is in danger, and there's never really been any evidence
of that. He's never produced any evidence to back up
anything he's saying. My first concern is making sure that
I have full time security with me. That means into
every bathroom that I go to. From now until the
rest of my life, I'll probably never get to hang
(35:22):
out with my dog again. Besides the self pity, Alexander
craves revenge. I will unleash a legion of angels to
bring hell to our enemies. I pray that I am
the tool to stab these mother fucker's. You might be
(35:46):
tempted to look at somebody like Alexander and dismiss him
as a weird sight show a grifter into charlatan, but
that would be a huge mistake. I hate to say it,
but when Ali Alexander threatens revenge, we need to take
him seriously, especially given the militant nature of his fan base.
That you had a vast network of extremists, many of
(36:10):
them anti democratic activists who are actually trying to destroy
democracy in America because they know that democracy in a
multiracial country like this is a losing proposition for them.
And Ali Alexander was one of the main people behind that.
He was one of the ringleaders. Unless we do something
(36:33):
about it. Now, it's going to come back, and it's
going to be uglier. I know that. I do think
he'll be back. I really do. The case of Ali
Alexander represents both a problem and an imbalance in our
(36:54):
justice system. As of the writing of this episode, Ali
has not been charged with any crime for deliberately inciting
a riot that led to several deaths, and indeed, he's
back on his game, broadcasting on an encrypted app used
by many on the right. Now. One might argue if
he were to be charged that it would set a
dangerous precedent, It might make organizing unsafe for a variety
(37:17):
of people across the political spectrum, but that's already the case.
Left wing activists are regularly charged with felonies for organizing
protests where no one dies. In September six, socialist organizers
were slammed with a bevy of charges and in some cases,
threatened with up to forty eight years in prison for
(37:38):
organizing protests in Aurora, Colorado, where no one was killed
or seriously injured. They were charged with kidnapping because the
protests surrounded a police station and thus imprisoned officers. These
charges were dropped months later, but the case is ongoing.
In July, a test organizer in San Louis Obispo, California,
(38:03):
was charged with five crimes, including felony riot, for leading
protesters to briefly block a highway. And on January one,
the FBI arrested and charged a leftist activist who had
fought against ISIS in Syria and who tried to organize
an armed left wing counter rally to defend against a
far right attack he believed was coming. After January six,
(38:26):
he was sentenced to three and a half years. That
last one may seem like it crosses a line for you,
but in August one, failed comedian Jason left Cowitz stood
up at an anti mask rally in Santa Monica and
held up a list of the names and addresses of
every Los Angeles City Council member. He screamed, you want
(38:46):
to feel intimidated, We're coming to your homes. Were coming
to you now. He later added, quote civil war, Civil
war is coming. Get your guns. Left Cowitz, like Alley Alexander,
has not been charged with any crime. The FBI has
not shown up at his door to confiscate his weapons,
(39:07):
and they never will coming up. An episode three, a
radical far right militia group is spurred on by Alley
Alexander's lies and takes drastic action. They've gotten the gallows
(39:28):
set upside the Capitol building. It's trying to start fucking
using them. They're throwing your nets, they're freaking shooting people
are payballs, but we're in here. Everything we fucking trained
for fucking gets some In the next episode of The
Assault on America, we're in the fucking capital
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