Mike Baker, a former CIA officer and co-founder of Diligence LLC, joined Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the riots in DC and what he thought of Trump’s recorded message to the nation after the attack on the Capitol building.
Video transcription
ADAM SHAPIRO: Let’s bring Mike Baker to the stream right now. He is a former CIA covert operations officer. Mike, it’s good to have you here. I don’t know if you had a chance to see or hear that video that President Trump released, but he goes on to say that this was a fraudulent stolen election when it wasn’t. Even Mitch McConnell said no. I mean, how do you react to that?
MIKE BAKER: Well, it’s pathetic. It’s sad. It is embarrassing at the national and international level. And it’s, frankly, you know, very little, very late. Look, he learned nothing from four years of self-inflicted wounds, nothing. Even my youngest son learns from mistakes and not to repeat them after a period of time. And this message, as it is – I think Secretary Chertoff put it well – is still in the grip of complaints, right? He’s trying to calm down while trying to give up on a situation he didn’t foresee.
SEANA SMITH: Well, Mike, comparing that to what we heard from President-elect Joe Biden before, now he before, at that time, addressed the nation. He called the president. He’s saying that the president’s words matter, no matter how good or bad a president is. He was asking the crowd to back off to allow the work for democracy to go ahead. How do you compare the rhetoric we heard from President-elect Joe Biden, compared to what we just heard from President Trump?
MIKE BAKER: Well, I don’t think you can. Look, we all know it’s day and night, right? There has never been any change in messages from President Trump or the White House in the past four years. He was always direct and eloquent, in your face. It’s kind of indicative of who he is, right? He is a real estate developer in the three-state area who, over the years, spends his time punching people in the nose and getting punched in the back. You know, it should come as no surprise that, until the last day, he is consistent in his behavior.
But, you know, President-elect Biden is absolutely correct in trying to bring some sense of stability to this. But, you know, the president’s words, up to this point, about the fraudulent election – and I apologize. I have some works in progress here. But those words created this mess that the president-elect and the new government now have to deal with.
ADAM SHAPIRO: Mike, Josh Hawley, the Missouri senator, made a statement. I want to read the statement and know your reaction. Quote: “Thanks to the brave policemen, who have their lives at stake. The violence must end. Those who attacked the police and broke the law must be prosecuted. And Congress must go back to work and finish their work.” Nothing about your involvement in doing what we witness today. What do you think?
MIKE BAKER: Yes, there will be many people trying to walk the dog in terms of their actions related to fraudulent elections. Look, you know, be it fraud cases, there have been fraud cases in elections for generations. It is a human effort. There will always be something. Was it enough to bring down a court? No. No, it is not. And yet, there was this effort to try to instill that concept.
Look, I had dinner the other night with someone who still believed, to the bone, that President Trump was going to change that. And it is– again, I return to the same word– sad, frustrating, pathetic, embarrassed at the national level. But to break the law is to break the law. I suspect that many of those people who were invading Capitol grounds today were the same people who were deploring some of Antifa’s actions or people taking advantage of the BLM’s protests. It doesn’t matter which side of the spectrum you’re on. You break the law, you must be accused, arrested, fully prosecuted. That is simply – it is a simple thing, a simple concept.