While The Rest Of Us Die 1x1

1. - 2020 has just been one of the worst years

2. of American history. It's tragic.

3. It's absolutely tragic what has happened to this country.

4. - Americans have never felt so afraid and vulnerable.

5. - We have kind of lost the ability

6. to track how bad things are,

7. because every week, there's something new.

8. - Who do you serve? Who do you protect?

9. - Do something!

10. - But what if the worst is yet to come,

11. with no one in charge planning to help us?

12. - For over 70 years,

13. our leaders have told us one thing under the bright lights.

14. - The protection of the lives and property of Americans

15. is the responsibility of all public officials.

16. - Government's first duty is to protect the people.

17. - I care. We're trying.

18. - The country stands with you.

19. We'll do all in our power to help.

20. - But America's shadow government

21. has spent trillions of dollars on secret plans.

22. that serve one premise —

23. when the shit really hits the fan,

24. we're on our own.

25. - I have nothing. Nothing.

26. - For decades, the U. S. government invested

27. trillions of dollars in a secret plan to save itself

28. while the rest of us die.

29. - The most important decisions being made about the future

30. of the United States and the fate of the Earth

31. are being made in secret by a small elite.

32. - Engineers too sick to maintain the power grid?

33. The government's elite have massive generators.

34. Cellphone system craps out?

35. They've got their own secure network.

36. Supermarket shelves empty?

37. They've stockpiled enough food for years.

38. And don't get us started on toilet paper.

39. They've got a forest's worth stashed away.

40. - It's this massive secret project

41. that funneled unbelievable amounts of money

42. towards the survival

43. of the president and officials of government

44. and away from the betterment of American citizens' lives.

45. - I would like to begin

46. by announcing some important developments

47. in our war against the Chinese virus.

48. - March 24, 2020.

49. President Trump holds a press conference

50. to propose an end date for the growing global crisis.

51. - Easter is our timeline.

52. What a great timeline that would be.

53. - My question is, you have two doctors on stage with you.

54. Have either of them told you that's a realistic timeline?

55. - I'd love to see it come even sooner,

56. but I just think it would be a beautiful timeline.

57. Joe?

58. - But even as the President

59. downplays the pandemic publicly...

60. - It's going to disappear.

61. One day, it's like a miracle. It will disappear.

62. - Trump knows something that most Americans don't.

63. If the pandemic spirals out of control,

64. there are secret plans underway for him and his top officials,

65. even his immediate family,

66. to be evacuated to secure facilities

67. designed to withstand Armageddon.

68. - Thank you very much. Thank you.

69. - On the very same day that Trump was telling

70. the American people the pandemic

71. would magically disappear by Easter,

72. 1,600 miles away,

73. a military team is settling into life underground.

74. - Cheyenne Mountain is one of the U. S. government's

75. three main doomsday bunkers.

76. - Garrett Graff is an historian and journalist.

77. His book, "Raven Rock,"

78. was the first in-depth look at the government's secret bunkers.

79. - Inside the Cheyenne Mountain bunker,

80. the U. S. government hid a team of military commanders.

81. Their mission — to man the nation's defense

82. if it goes full zombie apocalypse aboveground.

83. It's all part of a plan that was hatched 70 years ago.

84. - In the 1950s, the government came up with plans

85. for a Deep Underground Command Center,

86. where the president and, you know,

87. a few hundred staff members not only could take shelter

88. but also could direct a nuclear war.

89. - The plan is called Continuity of Government,

90. or COG.

91. - At any moment, we could see thousands of members

92. of the government completely wiped out,

93. but there's a secondary government, a shadow government,

94. that is ready to take over at a moment's notice.

95. - These weren't just run-of-the-mill bunkers.

96. Some of them were entire hollowed-out mountains

97. with small freestanding cities that could support a population

98. of even a thousand people for a month or longer.

99. - The bunker system remained a secret

100. until 1974 when a commercial airliner

101. crashed into the side of a mountain in Virginia.

102. The crash revealed a massive secret installation

103. deep inside the mountain, known as Mount Weather.

104. - Mount Weather is now an unclassified facility.

105. Everybody knows about it.

106. But back then, it was highly secret.

107. It was heavily guarded. and it's where a continuity team

108. would go in the event of a nuclear war.

109. - The idea was that government officials could go there,

110. and they would be able to operate the government

111. even when almost everything else had been wiped off the planet.

112. - There would be interagency teams,

113. people from the State Department,

114. the Justice Department, the Pentagon, CIA,

115. and domestic agencies.

116. - Top civilian officials would hide away in Mount Weather.

117. But few knew there was another secret bunker.

118. - Every so often, you bump up against

119. Continuity of Government plans.

120. Sometimes you would spot helicopters

121. practicing for evacuations in the skies over the city.

122. And every so often, in a bar,

123. an official would talk about the secret facilities

124. that they were whisked off to.

125. - Graff's discovery of this world, and the most secret

126. of these facilities, happened by accident.

127. - A colleague of mine found

128. a government-intelligence I. D. badge

129. on the floor of a parking garage.

130. On the back were directions.

131. And it just made me wonder, "What else is out there?"

132. So that launched me on this journey

133. to try to map this secret world out there

134. that I didn't realize ever existed.

135. And the biggest thing I found

136. was the doomsday facility known as Raven Rock.

137. - Raven Rock, like Area 51, remains one of

138. the U. S. government's most classified installations.

139. Could you describe Raven Rock to me?

140. Like, what it is and what it's for?

141. - No.

142. - Raven Rock is an underground backup Pentagon.

143. - It's the most unbelievable place you can imagine.

144. You're 768 feet below the surface.

145. - Don Cammel spent 31/2 years at Raven Rock

146. as part of the president's communication team.

147. He's never spoken on camera before

148. about his time working in the secret bunker.

149. - Basically, they carved out a city underground

150. that could survive a direct hit from a nuclear blast.

151. After you go through the security, you walk in,

152. and it's basically an underground tunnel.

153. There's a glass door that was 31/2-foot thick

154. that weighed 30 tons.

155. You go through, like, an airlock,

156. and they had two of those doors.

157. And then, you walk another half a mile.

158. - A half mile deeper into the mountain is the bunker itself.

159. - And you're going past five buildings.

160. Those represent the five rings of the Pentagon.

161. And each of those buildings are three stories tall,

162. and they probably have 50 to 80 offices per floor.

163. - The buildings are mounted on springs

164. to survive the shock waves from a nuclear blast.

165. - There's a common cafeteria

166. capable of serving 3,000 people

167. three meals a day for 30 days on lockdown.

168. They had a barbershop in there with one chair.

169. - It's got massive reservoirs, generators,

170. even a crematorium, if needed,

171. post office, medical facilities,

172. and emergency command and communication links

173. to the U. S. military all around the world.

174. - As part of the White House team,

175. Cammel had access to the most restricted part of the bunker,

176. the presidential suite.

177. - The presidential suite is a very secure area.

178. The other people in the site, they had no access.

179. And they were very, very curious

180. as far as what was behind the door.

181. The presidential bedroom was, of course, a king-size bed,

182. and then there was a separate kitchen set up in our suite

183. to feed 30 or 40 people.

184. The presidential office overlooked the war room,

185. which had the same display that was a duplicate

186. of what they had in the Pentagon.

187. We would look down, and, of course, they'd look up,

188. and they couldn't see through the glass

189. 'cause it was a one-way glass.

190. - To understand why these bunkers were created,

191. you have to rewind to the 1950s.

192. For some, it was America's golden age.

193. But it was also the dawn of a ruthless fight

194. for global supremacy...

195. - The United States and the Soviet Union

196. stand on the verge of direct military confrontation.

197. - ... in which both sides built up an arsenal

198. of spectacularly powerful weapons...

199. that meant the next world war

200. would not last years but minutes.

201. - There might be as little as 15 minutes' notice

202. of an attack that could wipe out

203. much of civilization as we know it.

204. And so the Eisenhower administration began

205. an elaborate process of contingency planning.

206. And if we only had a few minutes,

207. then they didn't want to have any sort of layers

208. of review or approval that would slow down the process

209. of responding to a major emergency.

210. - To avoid mass panic, the U. S. government created

211. a nationwide civil-defense program.

212. - We all know the atomic bomb is very dangerous.

213. Since it may be used against us,

214. we must get ready for it.

215. - Growing up in the 1950s, there were fallout shelters,

216. places where you would go if the nuclear war occurred.

217. And in those fallout shelters, there was water.

218. There were prescription drugs.

219. The notion really was that you could go there and survive.

220. - The government starts telling Americans that

221. not only can they survive a nuclear war,

222. but they could go on living their lives

223. as long as they come together in an unquestioning mass.

224. - Duck and cover!

225. This family knows that even a thin cloth

226. helps protect them.

227. Even a newspaper can save you from a bad burn.

228. - But while the public was being told to build shelters

229. and duck under their desks,

230. the government elite were going to hide under tons of rock

231. and reinforced concrete.

232. - There was an awareness at the highest level

233. of the American government that these civil-defense drills

234. were really window dressing.

235. This was a massive, massive propaganda effort

236. that bore almost no relationship to reality whatsoever.

237. President Eisenhower knew that this was all bullshit.

238. He said things like, "If nuclear war comes,

239. there aren't going to be enough bulldozers

240. to scrape the bodies off the streets.

241. - If the Soviet bombs started dropping,

242. everyone was going to die.

243. Everyone, that is, but the chosen few.

244. The president and the government elite

245. would ride out Armageddon in massive nuclear-proof bunkers...

246. while American citizens died in the millions.

247. And while the average American

248. was oblivious to this elitist double standard,

249. in other circles, it was famously mocked.

250. - "Dr. Strangelove," the Kubrick film,

251. does an amazing job of parodying the whole notion

252. of a nuclear bunker

253. and decisions being made by a small elite.

254. - Of course, it would be absolutely vital

255. that our top government and military men be included.

256. It will foster and impart the required principles

257. of leadership and tradition.

258. - But the truth is even stranger than fiction.

259. The bunkers are just the beginning.

260. These secret government plans include a secret Air Force,

261. secret communication networks, a secret monetary system,

262. and a classified plan to suspend democracy itself.

263. And it all still exists

264. and could be put into action right now.

265. - The U. S. government spent billions of dollars

266. to build a secret bunker system

267. to save themselves in the case of nuclear war.

268. One thing the system lacks is how to restrain

269. an out-of-control president with his finger on the button

270. from starting that war in the first place.

271. July 2017 — Kim Jong-un's regime

272. test-fires an intercontinental ballistic missile

273. capable of hitting the United States.

274. President Trump counters with a barrage of his own.

275. - North Korea best not make any more threats

276. to the United States.

277. They will be met with fire and fury

278. like the world has never seen.

279. - And a war of words quickly escalates

280. into a full-blown crisis.

281. - The United States has great strength and patience,

282. but if it is forced to defend itself,

283. we will have no choice

284. but to totally destroy North Korea.

285. - Meanwhile...

286. As the crisis mounts,

287. North Korea's propaganda machine goes into overdrive.

288. While Trump's late-night tweets caused many to fear

289. the United States is 140 characters away from war.

290. - The president of the United States,

291. in a split second, without questioning,

292. can end the world itself,

293. which is a completely unprecedented

294. and disturbing development for an executive branch

295. which has grown in power and scope.

296. - Defense Secretary Jim Mattis

297. and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly

298. made a pact at the beginning of the Trump administration

299. to ensure that one of them was always available

300. to clarify any orders coming out of the White House.

301. - During the North Korean missile crisis,

302. James Mattis even sleeps in his clothes,

303. ready for action in a moment's notice.

304. But there's little they or any other top officials

305. can do to stop the president

306. if he wants to launch a nuclear strike.

307. - The United States is ready, willing, and able.

308. Rocket Man is on a suicide mission

309. for himself and for his regime.

310. - We have a president who is so dangerous

311. because this is a person who not only has unilateral authority

312. to use nuclear weapons but has multiple times now

313. and repeatedly shown a desire to do so.

314. At one point, he actually considered the idea

315. that a nuclear weapon could destroy a hurricane.

316. - If North Korea's Rocket Man actually launched

317. one of his nuclear missiles at the United States,

318. a secret evacuation plan would have kicked into gear.

319. To get the president and his shadow government

320. to the Raven Rock or Mount Weather Bunkers,

321. a vast secret transportation network was created.

322. You may know it as Marine One,

323. the helicopter that takes Trump golfing.

324. - Everyone sees us land on the White House lawn.

325. Shiny green-and-white helicopter

326. takes the president back and forth

327. to help him fulfill his executive agenda for that day.

328. - But Marine One is part of a fleet

329. of highly specialized aircraft

330. that have a much more serious function.

331. - We've taken those airframes and we've modernized it,

332. and we've hardened it against all kinds of threats.

333. The real bread and butter

334. comes from the communication equipment.

335. Our president can pick up that phone inside Marine One

336. and talk to any world leader, any combatant commander.

337. He can go through the Pentagon

338. and talk to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

339. - And if the president can't get to one of the secret bunkers,

340. an entire secret air force exists

341. to provide sanctuary in the skies.

342. - Right now, at this exact moment,

343. there's a plane sitting on a runway,

344. its engines are running, it's fully staffed.

345. It could be airborne in less than 15 minutes.

346. - Officially called Nightwatch aircraft,

347. they're known as the president's doomsday planes.

348. - They've been modified so much that the price tag on them

349. is about 10 times the normal cost

350. of a regular commercial 747.

351. - Manned by a crew of up to 114,

352. planes at 5,000 square feet of conference rooms,

353. communication centers, and private quarters.

354. To ensure electronics aren't fried

355. by an electromagnetic pulse from an atomic blast,

356. the planes are covered in wire mesh.

357. - Basically, it's a flying battle station.

358. The president can use it in times of war

359. to fight back against any adversary.

360. - And to order a retaliatory strike,

361. the president would turn to the world's most powerful briefcase.

362. - In a country that doesn't have crown jewels or a royal throne,

363. the physical manifestation of all of the president's

364. vast powers is embodied in the black briefcase

365. that is never more than a few steps away from the president.

366. - The so-called nuclear football briefcase

367. is the closest thing to the mythical

368. and often misunderstood "button"

369. the president can push to unleash Armageddon.

370. - If the United States were under attack,

371. the president probably has 10 minutes,

372. 8 minutes to make a decision about whether to retaliate

373. and about what form of retaliation to order.

374. Inside, there'd be a black book,

375. and the black book has visual representations

376. of what the different attack options would be,

377. maybe like the menu at restaurants

378. that show you the pictures of what you're going to order.

379. - He would communicate to the Pentagon, first of all,

380. who he was, authenticating himself with an elaborate code,

381. and then he would communicate the option he had chosen.

382. - 9, 8, 7, 6...

383. - From the time that the president gives an order,

384. the first missiles will leave their silos

385. four minutes later.

386. - And that decision would kill hundreds of millions of people.

387. And perhaps put the earth into a nuclear winter

388. for a decade or longer, destroying civilization.

389. He has to make that decision in a matter of minutes.

390. That's almost an impossible decision

391. for any human being to make.

392. - The nuclear football is based in trust.

393. It's the idea that the president

394. has the nation's best interests at heart,

395. that the president is the most logical

396. and calculating thinker that you can imagine.

397. All of that begins to fall apart if the president himself

398. is the threat to the nation.

399. - This wasn't the first time a seemingly unstable president

400. pushed the limits of America's doomsday machine.

401. - Nixon took the country and the world

402. to the brink of nuclear war

403. for no reason other than politics.

404. - October 27, 1969.

405. Hippies dancing in the street are oblivious to the fact

406. that their archenemy, President Richard Nixon,

407. has just ordered 18 nuclear-armed B-52 bombers

408. to take off and head towards the Soviet Union.

409. - We want Nixon! We want Nixon!

410. - Like Trump, Nixon had run as the law-and-order candidate.

411. He also claimed to have a secret plan

412. to end the Vietnam War.

413. - For four years, we haven't had a moment of peace abroad.

414. For four years, we haven't had a moment of peace at home.

415. My friends, when it goes that far, it's time to make a change.

416. - But now the country and the war are spiraling out of control.

417. And the newly elected president is desperate.

418. - Nixon decides to start acting

419. in a completely unpredictable manner.

420. He wants not just the Soviet Union

421. but the people of Vietnam to believe that he could unleash

422. the power of the nuclear bomb at any moment.

423. - He began loading up nuclear weapons on B-52s

424. and flying them in a way that suggested

425. that he was crazy enough to use them.

426. President Nixon believed that he could persuade the Soviets

427. that he was willing to use nuclear weapons,

428. that it might lead to a peaceful conclusion of the war.

429. - The challenge with that was that the other side

430. might believe that you would actually start a war.

431. - Any miscalculation by the Soviets might have easily

432. tipped the world into a nuclear exchange.

433. And if the Soviets had believed Nixon was crazy enough

434. to start World War III,

435. they would have begun to unleash their vast nuclear arsenal.

436. - Nuclear war is basically like a shootout in the Old West.

437. Whoever shoots first...

438. has a better chance of survival.

439. - With Soviet missiles raining down across the United States,

440. the American people would pay a heavy price

441. for Nixon poking the Soviet bear.

442. - They have the capability to wipe out New York,

443. Chicago, Los Angeles.

444. It would've been a cataclysmic war for the United States,

445. and there was no way that we could prevent that.

446. - Scientists, led by Carl Sagan,

447. determined that a full-scale nuclear war

448. using hundreds or thousands of nuclear weapons

449. couldn't be fought without effectively

450. destroying civilization

451. and perhaps destroying humanity as a species.

452. The survivors would envy the dead.

453. - The American people didn't know just how close

454. they came to Armageddon in October 1969.

455. The Soviets called Nixon's bluff

456. and didn't cave in to his provocation.

457. - It was a tactic that didn't work.

458. But the fact that he could do it at all is unbelievable.

459. - If the bombs had started dropping,

460. Nixon would've turned to the secret instruction manual

461. for handling such a massive national emergency

462. that would give him the right to rip up the Constitution

463. and throw away your rights.

464. And a version is still on the books

465. and available for our current president to use.

466. - When somebody's the president of the United States,

467. the authority is total.

468. But I have the right to do a lot of things

469. that people don't even know about.

470. The president of the United States calls the shots.

471. Most Americans don't realize the secret laws

472. and secret authorities

473. that have built up around the presidency.

474. - As a result of the Cold War, the American presidency

475. has grown in power exponentially,

476. in ways that the founders never could have possibly imagined.

477. - Then I have an Article II,

478. where I have the right to do whatever I want as president,

479. but I don't even talk about that.

480. - I can't think of any president who has ever claimed

481. that Article II of the Constitution

482. gives him the power to do whatever he wants.

483. But even then, he has the ability

484. to use secret legal memos and presidential orders,

485. known as Presidential Emergency Action Documents.

486. - The little-known Presidential Emergency Action Documents

487. are top-secret orders that grant the president vast,

488. sweeping powers in the case of a national emergency.

489. - These Presidential Emergency Action Documents

490. are sort of like a loaded weapon

491. that has never actually been deployed.

492. They are executive orders, proclamations, and directives

493. that are drafted in anticipation

494. of a range of worst-case scenarios,

495. ready for the president's signature in the event

496. that one of those scenarios were to come to pass.

497. What's extraordinary

498. about these Presidential Emergency Action Documents

499. is that none of them has ever been released or even leaked.

500. These documents are not shared with Congress,

501. even though they go to the heart of the government's plans

502. for responding to a major emergency.

503. - We don't know what the secret powers are,

504. we don't know when they could be invoked,

505. and we don't know what American democracy

506. would look like afterward.

507. - We have much less information about the contents of current

508. Presidential Emergency Action Documents,

509. but we do know what was in some of these

510. up through the early 1970s.

511. These purported to authorize martial law,

512. the roundup and detention of people listed

513. on an index of so-called subversives

514. that was maintained by the FBI, censorship of the press,

515. warrantless seizures of property,

516. and the suspension of habeas corpus by the president,

517. not by the Congress, as provided in the Constitution,

518. which basically means that people could be imprisoned

519. without judicial review.

520. These documents still exist,

521. and we know that there were 56 of them in 2018.

522. They are periodically revised and updated

523. to address current threats.

524. For example, a cyber attack, pandemics.

525. And it's not as if nuclear warheads have gone away.

526. We also know that the purpose of them

527. is to imagine the outer limits

528. of how far the president might possibly need to go

529. and to prepare for that scenario.

530. - With the power of life and death over the entire planet

531. and the ability to kick in secret laws

532. that could override the Constitution,

533. the office of the president of the United States

534. has been imbued with almost godlike powers.

535. To ensure there's always someone to wield

536. these incredible powers,

537. a vast system of presidential succession has been created.

538. - The goal was someone, somewhere,

539. was always ready to step into the presidency.

540. The president may die. The presidency always lives.

541. - And having someone ready is never more important

542. than on the day all of the nation's elected officials

543. gather for the peaceful transfer of presidential power.

544. - I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear

545. - In that void of 7 hours and 32 minutes,

546. had catastrophe struck, I would've become the president.

547. - "I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear..."

548. - I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear...

549. - "... that I will faithfully execute..."

550. - ... that I will faithfully execute...

551. - "... the office of president of the United States."

552. - ... the office of president of the United States.

553. - January 20, 2017.

554. Donald J. Trump is sworn in as the 45th president

555. after a campaign that divided the nation.

556. - So help me God.

557. - Congratulations.

558. - If anything happened to the man elected president,

559. another man is waiting under guard, far from the Capitol.

560. - While the world is watching in Washington,

561. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson

562. has been hidden away at a secure location,

563. ready to take over if something terrible happens in Washington.

564. He's the latest in a long line of designated survivors,

565. officials picked in advance

566. in the presidential line of succession

567. to ensure that, at high-profile events,

568. there's always one person ready to step in

569. if the unthinkable happens.

570. - Obama's Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson,

571. was once one of the federal lawyers who signed off

572. on the assassination of Osama bin Laden.

573. - On January 20, 2017, I actually had a fantasy

574. about how that day was going to go for me.

575. I was very much looking forward to leaving office

576. with the rest of the Obama administration.

577. And I actually had an app on my phone

578. that counted down the days, hours, minutes

579. until January 20, 2017, at noon.

580. But it didn't happen that way. At the very last minute,

581. I was asked to be the designated survivor.

582. - The idea of the designated survivor

583. is a relatively recent invention.

584. The recognition that the speed and terror of nuclear weapons

585. in the modern age

586. requires the ability to hand off the presidency

587. in a matter of minutes.

588. The goal was someone, somewhere,

589. was always ready to step into the presidency.

590. - Thank you.

591. - There is a fair amount of thinking that goes into it,

592. and the designated survivor would,

593. in the event all the others

594. in the presidential line of succession ahead of him or her,

595. would assume the office of the presidency,

596. - The line of succession moves down through the cabinet

597. in the order in which the cabinet departments

598. were created,

599. beginning with the Secretary of State.

600. And it goes through all the federal departments

601. until it gets to the Secretary of Homeland Security.

602. - In that void of 7 hours and 32 minutes,

603. had catastrophe struck...

604. - What a great honor to be able to introduce

605. for the first time ever, anywhere, the 45th president

606. of the United States of America, Donald J. —

607. - ... I would've become the president.

608. - While the American people

609. had voted a Republican president into the office,

610. if the unthinkable had happened that day,

611. the president of the United States

612. would've been a Democrat and a man

613. who never attempted to run for president.

614. But while the designated survivor

615. is a publicly known plan

616. to ensure the survival of the presidency during major events,

617. there's another secret plan that goes even further.

618. - The Continuity of Government plans

619. ensured the line of presidential succession in a way

620. that would be unrecognizable to most Americans.

621. - The idea was that the scale of damage could be so great

622. that everybody in the constitutional

623. line of succession would be gone,

624. and they would have to reach way beyond

625. the constitutional order of succession.

626. - In the event of a surprise catastrophic attack

627. on Washington, a host of officials

628. far from the Capitol would suddenly raise their hands

629. and announce themselves as the country's new leadership.

630. - People you might have heard of, like United States attorney

631. for the district of Illinois in Chicago,

632. but you would never imagine that that person

633. would be president of the United States.

634. But under these plans, there was an entire government

635. that was built separate and apart

636. from what's contemplated in the Constitution.

637. - Whether you come to office

638. because of the death of the president

639. or the resignation of the president

640. or election by the people,

641. you have all of the trappings, the authority,

642. and the responsibilities of the office,

643. including being the commander-in-chief

644. of the armed forces.

645. - And the president retains all those trappings,

646. responsibilities, and authority even after losing an election.

647. - In the early hours of November the 4th,

648. the man once rated the most popular

649. United States president in history conceded defeat.

650. - The United States is unusual in having

651. a particularly long period

652. between the election of one president

653. and the departure of another president.

654. It's about 21/2 months.

655. What that means is, you have a commander in chief

656. who may have been rejected by the American people

657. but still has the sole authority to use nuclear weapons,

658. has tremendous power.

659. - America might face one of the most perilous chapters

660. of its history

661. as a man who has shown no respect for democracy

662. or our democratic institutions faces a lame-duck period

663. where he has all of the authority of the office

664. and none of the sense of responsibility.

665. - Will you pledge tonight that you will not declare victory

666. until the election has been independently certified?

667. - If I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated,

668. I can't go along with that.

669. - Donald Trump may end up losing the election.

670. But during the so-called lame-duck period,

671. a president of the United States retains

672. all the vast powers the office has accumulated

673. over the last 70 years.

674. - So, there is this period of three months

675. during which a president who has been defeated

676. or whose second term has expired or is about to expire,

677. nonetheless is in charge of the military.

678. Let's imagine a scenario

679. where a president loses his bid for re-election

680. and then loses his mind,

681. in part because of the defeat, in part

682. because of some previously existing mental problem.

683. He loses control.

684. If a president rolled out of bed on a Monday

685. and wanted to end the world and called in the code,

686. there was no war going on, our hope would be

687. that the military officers receiving the go codes

688. might ask for higher authority or simply say,

689. "No, Mr. President, that is not a legal order."

690. But technically, they don't have to.

691. If the president says go, they're supposed to go.

692. - We've seen so many

693. of the institutions of the United States buckle

694. Under President Trump — the courts, the Senate,

695. the Justice Department.

696. Maybe I'm overly hopeful,

697. but the military seems to be one of the last institutions

698. that he hasn't managed to corrupt.

699. - It wouldn't be the first time that a president's ability

700. to unleash America's nukes was restrained.

701. - For over four months, Watergate has dominated the news media.

702. It is my constitutional responsibility

703. to defend the integrity

704. of this great office against false charges.

705. - As Watergate began to take down the Nixon presidency,

706. Richard Nixon began to unravel.

707. His drinking was out of control.

708. He was wandering the halls of the White House,

709. talking to the portraits and talking to himself

710. and talking to God.

711. He would talk about picking up a phone and bombing his enemies.

712. - So Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger

713. let it be known to the Joint Chiefs of Staff

714. that any order to use nuclear weapons by Nixon

715. had to go through him.

716. Now, technically, if Schlesinger had overruled Nixon

717. on the use of nuclear weapons,

718. it would have been an act of mutiny.

719. But he was sufficiently concerned about Nixon's

720. mental health that he wanted to make sure

721. there wouldn't be a catastrophe.

722. - Who do you protect? Who do you protect?

723. - But even if nuclear war

724. can be averted by clearheaded officials...

725. - We step back! Now you step back!

726. - ... all lame-duck presidents have the ability to invoke

727. the top-secret Presidential Emergency Action Documents.

728. - We know that the Department of Justice

729. was in the process of updating these documents

730. as recently as 2018.

731. So the question becomes,

732. what does the Trump administration view

733. as the outer limits of presidential power?

734. - When somebody's the president of the United States,

735. the authority is total.

736. And that's the way it's got to be.

737. - Your authority's total? - Total.

738. - That is not true.

739. Who told you the president has the total authority?

740. - Enough?

741. - Trump has repeatedly hinted about the secret powers

742. and the unimaginable capabilities

743. that he could have in an emergency.

744. The challenge is, we don't literally know what those are.

745. - The worst-case scenario is if this president

746. were to exploit the actual emergency presented by COVID-19

747. and/or to try to manufacture emergencies,

748. maybe by provoking violence in relation

749. to some of the protests around police brutality

750. and to use those situations as a pretext to deploy the military

751. or to engage in other extreme uses of emergency powers

752. in a way that could undermine

753. a fair and free election and undermine our democracy.

754. - They say that they're going to threaten riots

755. if they lose on Election Night.

756. What are you going to do?

757. - We'll put them down very quickly if they do that.

758. - How you gonna do that? - We have the right to do that.

759. We have the power to do that if we want.

760. Look, it's called insurrection.

761. We just send in, and we do it very easy.

762. - In that extreme situation,

763. if all of these powers were deployed,

764. what you're looking at

765. is a democracy turning into an autocracy.

766. - We're entering a very perilous chapter of American history...

767. - You're disrespecting the flag!

768. - ... when you can't trust that the president

769. is acting in the nation's best interests.

770. - Any attempt to really impose martial law,

771. I think, would ultimately fail,

772. but I could imagine the arrest of key members of Congress

773. or leading figures in the United States

774. that would profoundly harm our democratic systems

775. even more severely than they are right now.

776. - Jews will not replace us!

777. Jews will not replace us!

778. - By the way, I can't even believe

779. that we're talking about these scenarios.

780. We're talking about a scenario

781. of a president imposing martial law.

782. The fact that this conversation is even happening

783. is a sign of how bad things are in the United States right now.

784. - We need to look at how presidents can be restrained

785. and how bad-faith actors can be restrained,

786. because here we have a president —

787. God knows what he could possibly get into in two months,

788. particularly being a scorned, unstable, healthy individual.

789. - These plans and powers enable the president to cause

790. as much chaos and damage as he wants,

791. knowing he'll be safe down in his bunker,

792. while above him, the rest of us are left to die.

793. Since the beginning of the Nuclear Age in 1945,

794. decisions of incredibly profound importance

795. have been made by a small number of policy makers

796. in Washington, D. C., mainly in secret.

797. And it's really important that the American people

798. understand these issues,

799. educate themselves about these issues,

800. and be part of the process of debating them

801. and making the decisions,

802. because the consequences of these decisions

803. are almost unimaginable.

804. - 2020 is the beginning of the age of catastrophe.

805. It's kind of the future warning us.

806. - All we want is justice! We can't get justice?

807. - There's so much uncertainty, discontent, fear.

808. - The apocalypse is sort of closing in on us from all sides.

809. - It turns out none of the plans that we had developed

810. during the Cold War would work.

811. - Everybody out!

812. - Because you can lock on to him, shoot him, shoot him, shoot him.

813. - We've seen it with earthquakes, hurricanes, and now a pandemic

814. just how wide the chasm is between the powerful

815. and the rest of us.

816. - It is fascinating how this disaster

817. seemed to disproportionately affect poor black people.

818. - I think if we had a major catastrophic event,

819. you could see America would do well

820. in the first 7 to 10 days.

821. - End the shutdown now!

822. - Then you're going to immediately fall into chaos.

823. - Back up! Back up!

824. - The world is kind of on fire.

825. And the elites are retreating into bunkers.