Will There be a Peaceful Transfer of Power?

Col. Larry Wilkerson with the Transition Integrity Project briefs the Transition Team on ways President Donald Trump might try to contest the election, and what to expect if 2020 becomes the first violent transition of power in American history. Wilkerson is the former Chief-of-Staff to Sec. of State Colin Powell and a professor at the College of William and Mary.

Michael Pope
Welcome to Transition Virginia, the podcast that examines the transition of power from Republican to Democrat. My name is Michael Pope.

Thomas Bowman
And I'm Thomas Bowman. Today on the podcast, we're gonna look at what might happen if President Trump disputes the election. What happens if Virginia sends rival slates of electors to Washington? Don't laugh. It's happened before. We're really honored to have a dynamite guest to help us walk through the darkness. He's the former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, who's now a professor at the College of William and Mary. He's also a member of the Transition Integrity Project, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, thank you for joining us.

Col. Larry Wilkerson
Thanks for having me.

Michael Pope
So the Transition Integrity Project has done all this really interesting study of what might happen in different kind of scenarios. And I want to walk through a version of some scenarios that you guys looked at, it's actually kind of a mash up between two different scenarios. Okay, so it's nine o'clock on Election Night. The early returns show that Trump is leading in all the in person precincts across Virginia. Now, none of the at large absentee precincts have come in yet. And Fairfax County's at large absentee precinct, that's not expected to report it's at large absentee ballots until about midnight or so. So here's the scenario. Here's the beginning of this scenario, I want to begin to talk about. The early returns showed Trump is of course leading in those precincts. Trump declares he has won Virginia, so he either says something in public or he sends a tweet. He says he has won Virginia, the Trump team has won the electoral votes in Virginia. His campaign team then sends out an army of lawyers to stop the count, declaring the absentee balloting fatally flawed and corrupt. His supporters now believe Trump has won Virginia and any attempt to continue the counting of ballots is what they will view as an attempt to steal the election. Colonel Wilkerson, will Trump's lawyers be able to stop election officials from counting absentee precincts? Is that something your team looked at?

Col. Larry Wilkerson
I seriously doubt it. And we did look at it. And we looked at it all across the country. Not that they won't try. I think we saw that too, very vividly, that they would try. But we have spent a lot of time and I think we've been, we being not just the Transition Integrity Project, but probably even more so the National Task Force For Election Crisis, of which I'm also a member. We've spent a lot of time with media boards, with editorial boards, with decision desk groups, and so forth. Not just from the national media, we started there, as you might imagine, but also with local media as to say, especially in the swing states, the battleground states like Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and we think we've done a pretty good job. And we've gotten feedback from most of them, including Fox News, that they're going to be very circumspect understanding that there is so much voting by mail, new absentee voting methodologies, and so forth in almost every state, and that they're going to have to wait before they call things, so you can start all the legal proceedings you want to, we're fully prepared to block you in the courts, and are doing so right now and have been doing so for some months. And we welcome Chief Justice Roberts recent decision that essentially stayed the action in Pennsylvania, that was partly our case, too. So we think that the legal remedies as well as the practical remedies, and certainly the media being more circumspect, about the way they announced results and so forth, is going to counter anything Trump tries to do.

Michael Pope
I want to follow up on something you just said there about the Decision Desk at Fox News. Now, famously, this was an issue in the 2012 election when Megyn Kelly did that famous walk down the hall, and she actually walked into the Decision Desk. Now you and your team actually met with the Decision Desk at Fox News, give us a little insight. What was that meeting like? What did you learn about the Fox News Decision Desk?

Col. Larry Wilkerson
Let me say first, I wasn't there. Our media team did it. But I did get a debrief. And they were very satisfied with everyone from AP to Fox, in terms of the way they took our message on, the way they asked questions as we explained it even more deeply. And it is complex, in certain areas, where the Blue Shift, we're now calling it the Red Massacre, too. The blue shift could be overwhelming in certain states, Pennsylvania being one of them. I mean, it could be thousands, if not 10s of thousands of votes, that shift, what might look like one result, it'll be close probably, but one result at the polls closing, if you will, or maybe by midnight on Election Day, the third, it might shift that as much as 100,000 votes. So I think we made a lot of progress with all the media. We're still doing it. We're trying to get more local media as we go through the states. But I think we're being successful.

Michael Pope
If Republicans are able to delay the count, and even if they're not able to actually delay the count legally, will Republicans and Trump supporters be able to perpetuate this idea that Trump has won, and all those people trying to count absentee ballots are trying to steal the election?

Col. Larry Wilkerson
When you say Republicans, I'm a Republican. And by the way, most of the people, if not all, if memory serves, of the people in the Transition Integrity Project, who helped us, quote, play, unquote, in the war games, the simulations, the Republican side, were Republicans, some of them very prominent Republicans, were I to announce their names, you would recognize them immediately. So when you say Republicans, you're really saying Trump's core base. That's a different factor, I think. And one of the things I believe, and I'm receiving increasing evidence of this every day, that we're going to see between now and November 3, is more and more Republicans departing from the Titanic that is sinking with Trump at its helm. So it's going to be the core base. Now, I say that, and it is frightening as I say that, because one of the things our simulations show, too, is that there is a significant number of Americans, in Trump's core base, that will not only perhaps do what you're saying, which is take to the streets, or implying take to the streets and protest mightily that fake ballots have changed the election and so forth, as perhaps a Blue Shift occurs. But they'll bring their guns too, and that's a frightening scenario, but it's one that played out in not just one but a couple of our scenarios as we did the war-gaming to try and get some insights into what might happen.

Thomas Bowman
Okay, so there's another scenario where rival slights of electors show up for the December 14 meeting of the Electoral College. Each side declares that the rightful slate of electors citing a different legal authority. And it's worth noting, this scenario happened in 1876, when four states sent rival slights of electors to Washington. Colonel Wilkerson, will Trump's electors be willing to go along with assembling an alternative meeting?

Col. Larry Wilkerson
You've just described, perhaps one of the scenarios, three or four of them in particular, that are technical, as you just described this one, that worry us. We think there are several things that operate in a scenario like this, one of which is the preference is for the Governor. And so if the Governor is presenting the slate, it has more umph, if you will, it has more staying power. That doesn't dissuade one from thinking that the Republicans might pull something like this because many of the states have Republican Governors. If the Legislature is presenting one slate, and the Governor the other slate, the tendency would be, probably, to go to the Executives slate. The second thing we learned was that, or insight we gained, is that the reluctance of Washington, if you will, to disenfranchise voters in the state, by saying, "Okay, you people can't make up your mind. So the safe haven is approaching or maybe it's past, and it's over you, we just we're going to disenfranchise all of your voters," We don't think that'll happen. So we do think one or the other slate will be accepted, we think the Governor's slate would have the more power to be accepted. And then thirdly, there's a there's a question here as to whether or not there might be, at least a perfunctory examination of what created the two slates, and then a declaration based on that examination, that one or the other slate is valid, and the most likely to be valid, would be that one that followed the state's laws and the spirit of the Constitution the most closely. So we are somewhat confident that if a scenario evolves the way you just described it, that it will not necessarily rebound to Trump's credit, it will probably be decided logically, and if it is decided that way, it probably will go for whoever won. And we don't think that's going to be that difficult to determine state by state as to who won, as long as state laws are followed.

Thomas Bowman
It strikes me that this particular scenario, while it may not be realistic in Virginia, it's a lot more worrisome in a state like maybe Georgia, where the popular vote could potentially go for the Democrat, and the Governor accedes to stopping the count of the absentee ballots, and appointing that Republican slate of electors.

Col. Larry Wilkerson
You're right.

Thomas Bowman
Okay, so what do we do about that?

Col. Larry Wilkerson
Well, you sort of hold on to your horses and hope that better principles, humanity, humaneness, whatever you want to call it, those things that have always wrapped up our elections, even when there was cheating, the decency, if you will, of the people on both sides. And I'm not I'm not being Panglossian when I say that. That sort of spirit has saved this country more than once. It certainly operated with Richard Nixon, with Kennedy, cheating in Chicago and Illinois, in general, when Nixon lost to Kennedy and Nixon nonetheless conceded when he could have brought real cases against Kennedy, if you will, or against the election process. It certainly operated in Florida when Al Gore could have not conceded and carried it on maybe for a year in contention. So this kind of, what I call Principle Decency, it may sound Panglossian, but it has helped this Republic survive transitions again and again and again. It's, is it operative now? Well, with Trump, it isn't. It isn't operative at all. But I like to think that out there in the hustings, as it were, in Georgia and Texas and other places, even though we're seeing all kinds of things like Governor Abbott, for example, putting one Dropbox in Harris County where more than 4 million voters live, and many of them are minority voters. So clearly Abbott's move is to disenfranchise minority voters. But I think that's going to be minimal. And if it does impact things, we're going to be able to deal with it, either with court cases, legal action, or with an exposure to the American people of the disaster that Georgia is, for example. I was really angered. I've lived in Georgia. A long time, I was stationed in Fort Benning, three times in my army career. So I know Georgia quite well. I lived in Fulton County, my parents had a home in Fulton County. I know that area, I know Cobb County, Gwinnett County, I know Georgia fairly well. I was really dismayed with the last time the Secretary of State engineered the election so that the Secretary of State could be elected. That was pitiful, that defied all of what I just said about the basic decency of people involved with elections. But I hope that doesn't operate, I hope it isn't the case in Georgia this time around and if it is, I hope the rest of the vote beat the hell out of Georgia.

Michael Pope
Now, one quirk about this scenario of rivals slates of electors, like the Trump slate of electors and the Biden slate of electors, one sort of quirk in this has to do with who gets the power to appoint electors. So the Constitution actually gives that power to the Legislators. Now you were making the point earlier, it's a valid point, about when the Governor has a stamp of approval on something that actually carries a lot of weight, but the letter of the Constitution actually gives the Legislators the power to do that. So I think one thing to at least think about is any state where the vote goes to one candidate, but there's a rival party in power of the Legislature, they could, in fact, appoint their own electors, and send those electors to Washington. So in your war games, at this transition project, what was the thinking about, like states sending rivals slates of electors? I mean, I know that seems kind of far fetched, but it has happened in 1876. I mean, what is the sort of thinking about states sending rivals slate of electors?

Col. Larry Wilkerson
We had quite a bit of discussion about that sort of thing, and not just in the simulations, but within the Task Force itself, the larger Task Force, again, the complexities of it are, they are such that, my view, was that we ought to write all this up afterwards, point out the holes in the U.S. Constitution, in particular, through which one could drive a Mack truck, and give these writeups, these recommendations along with these write ups, to the Congress and to others who might be concerned with future elections, and ways to correct some of these problems, to fill these holes and so forth. You probably know that after the 1876 election, there was an attempt to do that, but the attempt was as bad as the problem. So we need to do some things about our institutional election process. And I hope the Taskforce renders these things. But to your question, we've been through everything from faithless electors, to could it possibly happen, that the Constitution would be followed to the letter, and the states would simply disregard the popular vote and appoint electors as per their power, although it hasn't been done for a century, and certainly the weight of evidence and law is against that. I think you just have to wait and, you know, see what happens with regard to a particular state. And if it is incredibly untoward those who say illogical, unreasonable, and just doesn't represent what is easily discernible, the will of the people in that state, you start the law suit, you start the legal case, the proceedings or whatever, and you pursue it to the ends of the earth, until you get that situation reversed. And you get the vote, in that state, representative of the actual vote in that state, which is why we say it's so important that people, we haven't elected a president in this country, with much more than about 51 or 52% of 200 million of eligible voters voting. That's a disgrace. That's a total disgrace. And I will tell you, that through studies we've done at the Government Department at William and Mary, we know that in senatorial and representatives to Congress elections in state by state on a case by case basis, the low margin of victory within a low margin of eligible voters voting is just disgraceful. You can win the Senate in some states with less than 11 or 11% of the vote. Oh my god, you can buy that much of the vote. So it's disgraceful that Americans don't vote. So our solution to this, the big solution though, Wham it home solution, is vote. Get out there and vote young people, middle aged people, old people, get out there and vote. Whatever method you feel is safe, secure, from the pandemic, from whatever, get out there and vote, we need an overwhelming vote that no one can contest. Not even Donald Trump and his lackeys.

Michael Pope
You mentioned earlier that there was a hole you could drive a Mack truck through, let's drive that Mack truck through that hole. Okay, so imagine this scenario, it's January 6, and the newly elected members of the House of Representatives, and the newly elected members of the U.S. Senate, they assemble for their joint Session of Congress on January 6, and they're tasked with considering all these electoral votes sent by the states. Now the joint Session is presided over by Vice President Mike Pence. He's sitting in the presiding chair there, and you've got the new members of the House, new members of the Senate, but the old outgoing lame duck Vice President. And so they've got two packages of electoral votes from Virginia, and potentially other states, but for our purposes, let's talk about Virginia. So they've got a Republican slate of electors from Virginia, and they've got a Democratic slate of electors from Virginia, and they're legally required to consider both of those packages, and both Chambers must agree to throw out a bad submission, both chambers must agree. Colonel Wilkerson, what happens if the House and the Senate can't agree, in other words, the Democratic House refuses to throw out the Trump submission, and the Republican Senate refuses to throw out the Biden submission and they can't agree, what happens then?

Col. Larry Wilkerson
Well, you just found one of the big holes that the Mack truck is busily going through. First, let me thank the first part of your question, because there was an insinuation there, nothing against you, but there was insinuation there. We think and we have written extensively on, and I think it's a good solid position that we could support in the courts or whatever, that the Vice Presidents role is, as we like to call it, ministerial, that is to say, in a more modern sense, maybe administrative. He's not going to influence it one way or the other. His job is simply to preside, not to make any decisions, not to influence any decisions. But what you've, what you've cast here is a possibility of stalemate between a basically Democratic House and what I assume you mean, would be a Republican Senate. This is there's a footnote here. This is one reason why I say the Senate race is as important, perhaps even more important, than the Presidential race. We need to change the majority in the Senate. And I'm a Republican telling you that, we need to change the majority in the Senate. I'd love to see Kentucky throw Mitch McConnell out, but I'll take, as a sort of second prize, that McConnell has to go into the minority, and eat what the Democrats hurl at him, I hope. Nonetheless, the situation you described is a problem, especially if the Senate remains in Republican hands and does what you just said. It's a problem. And I don't know how we resolve that other than, as I said before, resorting to that, quote, gentlemanly conduct, unquote, that ultimately supports the will of the American people as reflected in the vote.

Michael Pope
You say the role of the Vice President is ministerial, and I'm sure there's lots of evidence to support that. However, what happens if the Vice President decides he wants to assume control and declare a winner? What happens then?

Col. Larry Wilkerson
Well, we would hope that the one of the bodies, if not both of the bodies, particularly if they are both Democratic at that time, object strenuously, and the Vice President is is, in a word, overruled.

Thomas Bowman
Okay, let's go on to our final scenario here. The deadlocked joint Session of Congress leads to a situation where no candidate has a majority of the Electoral College. That throws the election to the House of Representatives, although not every member has a vote, every state just gets one. So if no majority emerges in the Electoral College, does Trump win?

Col. Larry Wilkerson
Here's a scenario that we looked at fairly intently. And let me let me start from the beginning, we, if I recall, the ambiguous result is what we call it, was a 269 to 269 in the Electoral College, and an indecisive popular vote, until a day or two or three went by, and the Blue Shift occurred, the Red Massacre, and it shifted to Biden, of course, and there was real contention, this was one of the most difficult and contentious election scenarios that we looked at. Did we take it on further to the possibility that you suggest? No, we didn't. But we did take it that far in discussions, both in the Task Force and the Transition Integrity Project. And it it is a problem if you have one vote per state and the district, and that's the way you're doing it and say 31 or 32, I think it's 31 now, are in the hands of the Republicans, and they vote strictly party line, then you got a problem.

Thomas Bowman
Is there any scenario where a House decided election doesn't have Trump winning?

Col. Larry Wilkerson
Well, you're assuming that the newly elected bodies are going to have the same appreciation, perhaps, that at least 40%, maybe 45% of America had, of a quote Trump presidency, unquote, that they had perhaps in 2016, 2017, 2018, and even 2019. I think the Trump power management structure has deteriorated markedly since mid summer. And even since the first debate, I think we're seeing that reflected in the polls. I think the real solid polls right now are showing a 10 to 14 point margin. I think you're going to see that deepen and go more profoundly in favor of the Democratic candidate over the time period we have left, which is very short now. I think most of this is result of the Cavalier and strictly bad management, of the COVID-19 pandemic. I think it also is a product of Trump's inability to fashion any rhetoric at all that appeals to anyone other than the very, very raw core of his base. So I think there are going to be some people taking some hard looks at themselves between now and November and afterwards, particularly my Republican Party, they are going to be looking for life rafts. And I include the Vice President in this. I didn't say that when we were talking about what he might do in the Senate, but he's got to think about his future. All of these people have to think about their future. And they have to think about the future of the Republican Party. And frankly, the Republican Party looks like it might be going into the wilderness per this election, for the next 30 years, the next generation. That's something these people got to think about. Even some of the more crazy insane members of Congress, like Texas' Louie Gohmert, whose office I've been in and wanted to leave five minutes after I got in there. Man's insane, or Ted Cruz or my good South Carolina buddy, Lindsey Graham, you name any of these Republicans who have, they think, a future and their future is becoming circumscribed. It's becoming denied, rapidly, as we move towards this election. They've got to start thinking about that. If they don't start thinking about it, I think they're going down with the ship.

Thomas Bowman
Colonel Larry Wilkerson, we've got to take a quick break. When we come back, we would like to talk to you about the troubled transition of power that we're expecting.

Col. Larry Wilkerson
Thanks.

Michael Pope
And we're back on Transition Virginia, we're talking about what happens in a disputed election. We had lots of scenarios in segment one. For segment two, I want to focus on the transition. Now, Colonel Wilkerson, your project looked at lots of scenarios where Trump sort of just refuses to leave office. And there's lots of potential things that could happen as a result of that and around that, and I want to dig into a little bit of that. What happens if Trump loses the election, but refuses to leave office? What happens then?

Col. Larry Wilkerson
We looked at that fairly extensively. We call it our scenario where Biden has a clear win, both in the Electoral College and the popular vote. And in in our game, essentially, the Republicans grudgingly conceded. The President never said anything. But they spent the 74,75, whatever it might be, probably 70 days if we have a longer election than usual. Between then and noon on the 20th of January, when the incumbent must be gone, they spent it raping, really, the United States government. What do I mean by that? Everything from stealing the furniture out of the White House, to stealing any money they could find, and people think, well, the Executive doesn't have any money. Ha. Executive has a lot of money, ever since Nixon, Executives know how to keep money around. They traveled all over the world, they got the Secret Service in mass to stay in Trump hotels, they went and visited world leaders, who basically wouldn't meet with them, but they tried to meet with them. They did all manner of things to create problems for the incoming administration to include, and this is a very important move, very detrimental move for the Biden ministration, not giving them an a transition, that is to say, being unavailable for briefings, for policy and security briefings, intelligence briefings, and so forth, just not having a transition, other than at the third or fourth tier of the agencies and cabinet departments and so forth. This is, I know, this is a bad situation, because I came in with Colin Powell, in that truncated transition of the Bush administration, in 2000, and 2001. And it was a very abbreviated transition. And I think, as a result, we missed, in many respects, the seriousness of Al Qaeda and the briefings on Al Qaeda. So much so that we didn't have an NSC meeting, a National Security Council meeting with Al Qaeda on the agenda until August. And of course, the terrorist attacks occurred a couple of weeks later. So that's a very bad thing for an incoming administration to have no substantive transition. This is all the Trump team tried to do. Plus getting MAGA TV ready, MAGA TV to replace Fox with Sheldon Adelson and other billionaires backing it to the Hill, and to become the mouthpiece of Trumps base, which would then try to do everything it could to undermine the Biden Administration from the get go. The moment they took power, there would be this monstrous media complex, broadcasting 24/7 trying to undermine them. So it was it was quite a traumatic transition and aftermath, even when Biden won clearly.

Thomas Bowman
So, Colonel, let me ask you about the role of the military here. Presumably, sometime after November, Donald Trump will ask the military to help keep him in office. What is the military going to do?

Col. Larry Wilkerson
I think General Millie's comments after his promenade with the President to St. John's Episcopal Church back a few months ago, his comments after that, that the officers of the military owe their allegiance not to the man in the White House, not to the person in the White House, but to the Constitution, are very indicative of what the military will do, it will stay in barracks, as we say, it will not come out and in any way fashion or form interfere in the election or in the aftermath of the election. The one exception to that would be if somehow we have major conflict in the streets, and a number of metropolitan areas. That's probably where it would be, big cities that are Democratic strongholds in most cases, then the military might come out. But I don't think it would come out with the idea of shooting Americans for Donald Trump, it would come out with the idea of restoring order. And whether it did that under the Insurrection Act invoked by President Trump or some other lifting of Posse Comitatus, for example. There's a huge capacity to do that now associated with terrorism, and domestic terrorism in particular. And let's not forget, there are lots of domestic terrorists in this country now. So you have to be eyes number one concern for that it could happen. But I don't think it's going to happen in a way that will be injurious to our Republic, it will be protective of that Republic.

Michael Pope
You say the military would stay in barracks and essentially ignore the orders from the Commander in Chief. Is there any precedent for that? I mean, if looking to history, do we know of any examples where the military had an order from the Commander in Chief and just said, "Well shove it. We're not going to do it," Is there any example of that?

Col. Larry Wilkerson
Yeah, there's two very vivid examples. There's Ulysses S. Grant, right before the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, during the impeachment and afterwards, who acted completely extra constitutionally, in my view, anyway, I think most scholars would agree, when he defied his president, at that time, he was sort of the equivalent of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, except for one thing, he commanded the U.S. military. At that point, one of the most powerful, effective militaries in the world. In fact, European powers, who had been observers on Civil War battlefields were really worried about what that military might do, because they realized it was probably the most efficient, effective military in the world in 1865. So Grant, sends Sherman and Sheridan and other Northern commanders to places like New Orleans and South Carolina and so forth, to stop the killing of Blacks that was going on. He did that without the President's mandate, without the President's orders. And in some cases, without even his knowledge. Stanton, the Secretary of War may have known about it, but Grant was the person who did it. So he was clearly acting extra constitutionally, if you will, but he was doing it to protect Black voters who were being murdered by people in the Southern cities like New Orleans, Charleston, and so forth. Let's come forward to a little more modern time when Richard Nixon, embroiled in Watergate, was having a bottle of Jack Daniels by about five o'clock every day. And word went around the Cabinet, particularly to the Secretary of Defense, that if you get any orders from this gentleman, when he is in this state, please let us know, so we can obviate those orders before you carry them out. It wasn't that explicit, but there was certainly an agreement. I think there would be something like that. It wouldn't be as expansive, and it wouldn't be as agreed to, probably in a Trump Administration, because look what he done. He's gotten rid of everybody. He's even losing people now, whom he has allowed to come into office without Senate confirmation, and who only gets six months. He's losing them, because the GAO has figured out, "Oh, you've been there 182 days, get out, you're not confirmed by the Senate. Get out." So there's not this kind of widespread acknowledgement of this thing amongst the Cabinet. But I think there's probably enough in critical places, like with Mark Esper at the Secretary of Defense's Office, I don't think Mark would be the kind of person who would carry out an order that he felt was unethical, immoral or illegal.

Michael Pope
Well, what about if Trump's heavily armed supporters take to the streets with all of their open carry weapons? You know, we saw that that happen earlier this year in the streets of Richmond. I was out there interviewing these people. What if they come back, and they're in the streets of Richmond again, and maybe even they start shooting? I'm sure your project looked at this. What what happens with sort of heavily armed supporters taking to the streets and violence?

Col. Larry Wilkerson
You're talking about our probably most frightful scenario. It could be that we just get that kind of deployment of forces, if you will, to intimidate voters, particularly minority voters at polling stations. But it could be that it gets...it really gets rough. And it could be because maybe some of the places respond. And they don't respond necessarily with weapons, but they respond in a way that provokes those people to start shooting. Or it could be even more widespread than that. Or it could be even strategic deployments by the President himself, hiring contractors to work, like Eric Prince's people, to work at Homeland Security. I know about hiring contractors, I had a little bit to do with that at state when we were hiring them for Afghanistan and Iraq. And Eric Prince's people were there amongst those. You could hire them, dress them and military garb and send them out, and they could start the shooting. So yes, these are potential scenarios, we don't think the probability is high, but the severity is high. So we looked at them closely, it could happen. And we think it would start, not necessarily 100% of the time, it would start with this core base, which is the FBI will tell you, owns most of the three to 400 million guns in America. But we did see some possibilities for violence on the left side, too. When I've said that in other audiences that, "Well, the left doesn't own any guns." Well, you don't need to own guns to start violence. You can throw Molotov cocktails, you know, you can do all sorts of things that would get the other side and sense and start the guns to shooting. So we didn't put a lot of weight on the left's beginning, any kind of violence, most of the weight was on the right, but it could happen. And as I said, these are the very worst scenarios.

Thomas Bowman
Okay, so we've heard about what we think might be some bad scenarios, but what are you considering as your most likely scenarios for Election Day?

Col. Larry Wilkerson
My feeling right now, and it's growing stronger every day. And it's based on watching the President and listening to the President and also, what I'm hearing out of people to whom I still listen, and for whom I still have some respect within my own political party, the Republican Party, I think we're gonna have a blowout. I think Biden's gonna win decisively in both the Electoral College and the popular vote, even with the Republican cheating. And let me back up just a moment and tell you, the Republican Party knows, it knows that when Colin Powell told it many years ago, to open its tent and allow minorities and different sexual orientations, a whole panoply of America into its tip, because America's demographics were changing so decisively, going away from white male, wealthy types, you know, the, as the right will say, "the founders, the founders, they were all males, and they were all white." Going away from that, the demographics are majorly changing. And Powell told them, "If you don't open that tent, if you don't open that tent to those other people, you are damned, you are done as a political party." Well, they know that, they didn't open the tent. They know that. They know the demographics are changing to their disfavor, and they know they haven't changed, so the only way they can win is cheat. And they do that through unique gerrymandering and you know, the technological equivalent of stuffing ballot boxes, and taking names off gravestones, and having Governor Abbott restrict Harris County to one drop box. All these manner of things is what Republicans do because they know that they can't win without doing that. So I'm hoping that gets overwhelmed, overwhelmed in November.

Thomas Bowman
All right, let's take a break. Colonel Larry Wilkerson, thank you so much for being on Transition Virginia. We'll be right back.

Michael Pope
And we're back on Transition Virginia. It's question time. This is when we take questions from you. This is your opportunity to engage with us. So if you want us to answer your questions, head over to transitionvirginia.com and hit the button that says "Contribute on Patreon." We will read your questions on the air and our first question comes from one of our patreons. He's a former student of yours, Colonel Wilkerson, Harrison Roday, this is his question. Lots has been written about the challenges of working in the national security apparatus in the Trump administration with the president using terms like, "deep state" and questioning the loyalty of public servants. How has this changed the public perception of the agencies? And how does the country move forward from this?

Col. Larry Wilkerson
That's a very good question. I think it's probably accurate to say that first of all, most Americans don't really think about such academic terms as deep state bureaucracy, meritocracy, those who actually run the government and so forth. They think about it in terms of how is my life going? How is my job going? How is my family faring and so forth. And the answer to those questions for 200 plus million Americans right now, maybe even 300 plus million Americans, is not a good answer. And the Covid-19 pandemic is not necessarily all there is to it. Part of their problem in finding a positive answer to those questions, is the maldistribution of wealth in this country, which is now unprecedented, probably deeper and more profound than it was in 1929. So if we don't do something about that, Republican or Democrat, very soon, we're gonna have a revolution on our hands, there's no question in my mind about that. The second thing they don't like very much is these continual stupid wars. And one of the reasons Trump was elected, in the first place, one of the reasons he got a lot of votes from that sector in West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, and so forth, and we know this from polling data, and then investigating that polling data down in the homes, was because he promised to put an end to these stupid wars, and so forth. So until these more significant problems in Americans minds are taken care of, or at least ameliorated in some way, we're still going to have this general feeling of lack of confidence in, mistrust of, look at the rating of Congress, Congress is rated down there about along with bulldogs and dirt. I think its last rating was actually subteen, something like 9%. You're looking at a situation where Americans simply don't have trust in, they mistrust even distrust their government. And sad to say, they increasingly distrust democracy. And when when a body of people distrust democracy, they generally wind up with autocracy, a dictator of some sort or another, even voting him in the office, as they did with Hitler in 1933. So that's a very good question. And if we don't find some answers to it, if we don't deal with those answers, very soon, and effectively, we're gonna be in trouble.

Michael Pope
I want to piggyback on Harrison's question a little bit and ask about the Q anon phenomenon. Now, these are people who believe there's this cabal of Satanists who terrorize children's so that they can drink the blood of the terrorized child and they're willing to believe all kinds of things. They are deeply skeptical of the government who they think is lying to them. They're deeply skeptical of the media, who they think is lying to them. The FBI has identified this group as domestic terrorists, what happens to that group and what are the next stages of what they do?

Col. Larry Wilkerson
That's a very disturbing phenomenon in this country right now. I'm plugged into Ali Soufan's group. He's the FBI agent who did so much to isolate Al Qaeda after they attacked the warship in port, Aden, Yemen, and to do a lot after 9/11, too. He runs a private group now and other intelligence personnel who are still in the government or recently retired, who tell me that probably one of the biggest threats to this country right now from terrorists or terrorist like groups is domestic. It isn't Al Qaeda, it isn't ISIS, it isn't Jemaah Islamiya. It's none of these external terrorist groups, they're still a threat, but they can be handled. They say it's the domestic terrorist whom they don't know about, in many cases until they blow up a federal building as Timothy McVeigh did in Oklahoma, or the Unibomber, for example, and people remember that. They come on the scene when the blood comes on the scene. And that's very worrisome. And it's also worrisome when you think about the 300 to 400 million guns in this country. And incidentally, Cabela's and Midway and other big sellers of guns in this country, have been selling them fiercely in the last six or seven months, along with the ammunition. So it's a very worrisome phenomenon, whether it's the group you mentioned, or whether it's the Proud Boys or some of these other groups. Another really worrying aspect of them is they now go into the U.S. military, principally into the Army or the Marine Corps. And they get two or three years of training. And they come out and they share that training with their compatriots in these games. They will even go into the military and serve two years and think they got all the training they need, and get a bad conduct discharge and come out. They also, another disturbing trend, they also coordinate with neo nazi groups in Ukraine, and Poland, and Hungary, around the world. And they're they communicate with one another, they share training tips and so forth. They share, they share bomb making instructions. So it's it's a worrisome phenomenon, and the fact that this election might bring some of them to the streets, under the guise of being Trump supporters or whatever, is worrying. I think it's one of the biggest security concerns we have. I harken back to Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, all of them who said, you know, no external enemy will ever take out the United States. We're too big, we're too vast. We'll take ourselves out. I think that's a fair assessment of the biggest threat to this country is ourselves.

Thomas Bowman
So speaking of ourselves, we have a question from friend of the podcast, Chris Winslow. Now, Chris Winslow is a Republican supervisor from Chesterfield County. And he's actually concerned about the opposite. He asks, how are Democrats prepared to respond if they do lose on Election Day?

Col. Larry Wilkerson
We saw that in one or two of our iterations. And while we did see some response that you might call adverse, the only place where we saw it, and I use adverse guardedly here, where it was an outpouring that was almost unmanageable, was where they deemed, they being, say, 150 million Americans, that Trump had stolen the election, somehow, all these things that I've just talked about as being in place to prevent it, had failed. And Trump had in fact, stolen the election. Then they turned out, in fact, in one scenario, we had 150 million, all across the country, turning out and when when people question that I kind of said something like this. I was in London. I was in London during the greatest war protest England had ever seen, two and a half million plus people in the streets of London. Bobbies on horseback couldn't move, their horse couldn't move. There were too many people pressing on their flanks. Don't tell me it can't happen. And that grew and grew and grew until every major American city had millions of people in the street. Well, the the taking advantage of that, if you will, by groups like those, we were just talking about, the Proud Boys and so forth, and even worse groups, might start something and it might start something that everyone, at the end of the day, wishes never got started.

Thomas Bowman
Colonel Wilkerson, I personally was a Republican until 2009. And there are still plenty of just rank and file Republican voters. So I would ask that you can take us out on this episode by passing along a message to them. Why is this election different? And what do you say to those rank and file Republican voters who don't necessarily like Donald Trump, but find the thought of voting Democrat still distasteful?

Col. Larry Wilkerson
I tell them a little story about why I tell someone who really you just described, a Republican who's been a lifelong friend, and he's, he's actually a Black American. And I grew to be very fond of him, even to love him. As we worked together with Colin Powell and some other people on erecting the Buffalo Soldier Monument out at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, he's a very staunch Republican and a very staunch Trump supporter, until lately, he's beginning to fall off a little. But I said to him, I said, "Look, there's a philosophy of the lesser evil. Michael Ignatieff has written on it in the modern sense, quite eloquently. You vote for, you select the lesser evil. When you're confronted with two evils, one of them great and one of them less so, you vote for the lesser, but you never forget, after you vote, that you voted for evil, and you work to change that."

Michael Pope
This has been quite an episode, Colonel. We really appreciate your time. And thank you for listening to Transition Virginia. If you have any comments or questions about what you just heard, or maybe you want to tell us what you think about the show, write an email and send it to us at TransitionVApodcast@gmail.com. Maybe we'll even read it on the air. You can subscribe to Transition Virginia anywhere pods are cast, you can follow the transition team on Twitter @TransitionVA. You can find us on the web at transitionvirginia.com. Don't forget to like and subscribe so you can enjoy the next episode of Transition Virginia.