by robert mueller who was appointed in 2017. watch live coverage of the hearing beginning at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span, on c-span.org, or listen live on the free c-span radio app. joined next by armstrong williams, longtime radio tv talk show host author and commentator mr. williams thanks for being with us here on "washington journal" this morning. guest: good morning and thank you so much for having me. host: we started our segment last hour with michael hopkins saying that we asked both on to talk about the reaction last week to the death of george floyd at the hands of the minneapolis police but as the protests have grown, the civil unrest has grown and rioting. we want to get your reaction overall to what we've seen particularly in the last three ys over the weekend across the country. guest: the beauty of america is our right to protest in a very

peaceful way. and the majority of the protesters are very peaceful. they had the moral high ground no different than what happened when you had the terrorist attacks on the church in charleston. and members of that community even though they thought there would be looting and burning and vandalism and my cousin was one of those killed for no reason at all, the community kept the moral high ground and it galvanized the world. and so what you're seeing in places across the country are people who have the moral high ground but it has been hijacked. they're no different than the law enforcement officers that i consider to be their behavior to be no more than thugry the way george floyd was killed for no reason at all and others just stood around and did nothing as if it was something that they were accustomed to even though the cameras were rolling. you have to asked yourself what

happens to these few bad apples that were causing the reaction in such a way to not show any humanity. it's also a lack of humanity to burn, loot, destroy, burn precincts and to disrupt where people have a larger message. this has gone on for so long. it just did not start on the clock of president trump. it happened during president obama, bush, and clinton. we always have these situations. baltimore's burned, d.c. was burned a long time ago, and just continues. and why this happens, and these thugs should be taken into custody and booked and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. there's just no place and they're not representative of the majority of people who want to find a peaceful solution and say to law enforcement we cannot tolerate this any more. you've got to respect humanity and you cannot treat people as if their lives have no value. host: what do you think the responsibility is those you talk about had the moral high ground the movement has been high jacked.

how do the folks regain that moral high ground? guest: you're not going to lose the moral high ground when you watch that video of what happened to george floyd. no matter what you may think about law enforcement and the communities and people protesting you cannot see that -- i don't know if many people were able to watch the entire nine or ten minutes to see that kind of cruelty. i think people were shocked to see something like that. and it's unfortunate that there are those who have their own agenda and i can't say whether they're being paid for by someone. i don't get caught up in conspiracy theories. i don't know what it is that causes people to do further damage and harm to communities already suffering through the pandemic and covid-19 and yet i see these people. so what do i have to do with this? i believe you destroy my life i'm already suffering i'm not getting ppe money, i've got employee that is need to be employed and yet you're showing

disrespect. you're going to always have this. and i also don't think the answer is telling law enforcement in minnesota and other places to stand down. i so respect it had mayor of atlanta who just stood up and said she was outraged there's no place for this, this is unacceptable. you're destroying the cause. we have to have more mayors like the mayor of atlanta to stand up and take the moral highground and they can this back away from this thugish behavior. host: our guest, armstrong williams pods cast. in terms of the police and in particular the george floyd incident you mention it had term bad apples it's been mentioned by the national security advisor of president trump over the weekend. do you think that the police incidents, the racial incidents in the country are examples of bad apples in police forces or is there a broader systemic issue among police forces?

guest: both. for me personally i have been stopped 4:00 a.m. going to the gym driving, i've been stopped in the deep south driving. i've never had a bad experience with law enforcement. i've only seen the best of law enforcement in my entire life of dealing with them. and i find that 95% of law enforcement are just that way. our offices are literally next door to capitol hill police and i know many people in the washington, d.c. metropolitan police department and they comport themselves well they care sometimes we find ourselves on the weekend at our favorite breakfast place at eastern marked we speak with each other and show each other respect. i can tell you they too are just ashamed and embarrassed and humiliated what they see in the law enforcement and what they will tell you is what happens is that if someone like this, you ask yourself how is it that someone like him can have 17 infractions and continue to be promoted and move through the ranks.

the reason why is no different than you ask why is it sometimes in the catholic church these priests continue their abuse of these little boys. the reason is you cannot share their record. the person that gets them at the next parish have no idea of what their past records were. that needs to change. if you have that kind of behavior it needs to be shared not only with the police department thinking about hiring them because you need to make a decision. you should be slow to hire these law enforcement officers because something else we don't talk about many of them are badly damaged. they come from broken homes, abusive fathers and some get into law enforcement just to continue the work out their own psychology with what you've seen and the situation with george floyd. so the issue is they should be slow to hire but quick to fire immediately when you see this kind of behavior you should not pass this law enforcement officer to another precinct where they can harm kill and

destroy lives. host: our guest armstrong williams. the u.s. house coming in briefly at 9:00 for a proforma session. the phone lines the numbers are on your screen. we'll go to our democrat's line first in maryland. caller: how are you doing today? host: fine thank you. caller: basically a couple things. one thing about this policeman, what he did was he conducted a form of extreme torture. it wasn't just murder. nine minutes of torture and he knew people were watching. he knew it was caught on film. he didn't care because he knew there was a great probability that down the road the type of guy in new york or all these other places, even the guy who

shot brown, said that he would get lots of money from at right people to defend themselves and he would eventually walk out. that's the frustration part of it is that they know that they're going to say, ok, let's take four or five years to determine given enough time for these people to forget about what this man has done and he'll walk out. the f african americans have been dealing with this kind of stuff for 400 years of rep tishes negative reinforcement. imagine that happening to our counterpart. 400 years of always negative reinforcement of who what and how you are. how god created you. not just here in america. look at brazil and other places where you have people formerly from africa brought over as slafse. host: we'll get a response from armstrong williams. guest: i agreed with him in his

opening seconds but he lost me on the at right. it's not the alt right that treat people like that. we so want to malign the left, we want to malign the right, democrats and republicans. it's about right an wrong. it's about moral. the fact is the sments allowed him to stay on the police force. and you could only imagine if the police force, if it allows you to stay on the force and you get away with what happened to him and the native americans similar situation, you begin to believe your behavior is ok so you become an enabler and thaffers obvious when his colleagues were standing around him watching him do. they had no humanity. they looked in their eyes they were just as guilty as he was. so the bottom line what creates this kind of attitude and this kind of behavior when you see a person first-hand and it's being recorded and you do absolutely nothing. i'm not joust rageds over the

fact that george floyd died because he was black. i'm outraged that he died because he was a human being. when he dies a part of us dies also. i could care less about the officer's race. i care about his behavior, his attitude towards his human being that could have been me or anybody else. i think it'size to understand the narrative when it's black and white. and the caller is right there's a history of this happening to american blacks and this should not happen. you ask yourself would it have been different had it been someone who happened to be caucasian and would he have behaved differently? irtsdze not about race it's more about law enforcement and what they believe and what they're allowed to get away with. but i hope at some point that we become outraged over the fact that a human being lost his life and not the race of the person that caused him to die and not allowed him to live the to fulfill the promises

that he and his family had for his life. host: upper marlbror. maryland. caller: good morning, c-span and good morning mr. armstrong. you andry not total strangers. god bless cnn and for an opportunity -- c-span and for an opportunity to speak out. i am a nearly 83-year-old totally blind i'm only blind physically not in the ways that count. i'm a fully ordained minister. i was brought in to activism by the blood of emity til so i've een here a little while. lot of moving parts. america has to understand that it is perfectedly capable of overcoming -- we are not going to allow another execution and that's precisely what it was to take place under the full view

of a horrified america under the supervision of a white house that's smelling increasingly like a an out house. we have an opportunity to throw ll the garbage out the window. an election is coming. let's not bother about the ultitude of reasons. we have an opportunity to do what a cowardly emass clated republican senate could not do. let's impeach the unworthy person in the white house at the polls. host: gloria in maryland. armstrong williams, your response. guest: you know, the truth be told if president trump were not in the white house the situation would be no

different. as i said it happened on all the watches of the president of united states. if you think that you want to blame this on president trump or past presidents or congress and all of a sudden this problem goes away it's much deeper. it's a problem we must face and deal with. how we view and how we treat our fellow man, even when no one else is watching. it's all about how we rear and teach our children and what they see we do is exactly what they become. and we must value humanity not because of what humanity looks like but because we're all created in the eyes of god. we may make different choices, grow up in different circumstances but just because someone has wealth or poverty doesn't mean they have character. character is developed over how you treat people, how you live, and the good that you do and the life and time it's given you. while it's easy to bring politicians into this, obviously the politicians

cannot resolve this issue for us. we've got to reawaken the sleeping giant which is the american people. and when you see protesters speaking out not because of the color of their skib but the outrage of how we continued to destroy humanity then and only then will politicians follow as we lead them. host: president trump tweeting just moiments ago, just two things november 3rd tweeting the election date. here we are about five months from the election. how do you think the president's chances for reelection have changed given the covid pandemic and the recent unrest and violence in u.s. cities? guest: we're so focused on what's going to happen in this election, whether it's the president is been impacted by joe biden, we remember in 2016 when the press told us he did not have a snow ball's chance of winning the

white house. joe biden, we know far less than we think we know. let the people decide. the people will decide whether donald trump is deserving of another four year or whether they want to change with joe biden. whatever that decision is, at the end of the day when that election is over that person becomes my president of the united states and will remain my president of the united states. this is a republic. i respect it and let the will of the people decide. i think the president is doing the best he can. i think he cares about this country. obviously he's frustrated by covid-19. i think he's frustrate bid the riots. he doesn't always say the right things, doesn't always tweet the right things. i wish he had more discipline and self-restraint. but i never want to take away from the fact that i don't believe he cares. he cares about what happens to this country. when he talks about loot and shooting but those looters looked like many americans they were not necessarily americans who happened to be black. i think the issue is the frustration of people who take it to another level, who want to breach the white house

security gate. i think sometimes you have to have law and order in place. you cannot just stand down. i wish it were not coming from the president of the united states. i wish the city mayors and governors would stand up and take a strong stand to say we're not going to tolerate this kind of behavior. and if you conduct this kind of behavior it comes with consequences. host: we'll go to ray in north carolina. what's the name of your town? fuqua, north carolina. host: go ahead. caller: i just want to mention and i think armstrong is amazing. that was very descriptive everything that he has said. at first i was thinking of just how trump is being blamed for so many things that it's obvious he had nothing to do with. and not only in this matter but in many matters we're ignoring the local, the state, and the

federal folks involved in this and i can't help but think that those are democrats often in those positions. even the attorney generals, the people who enforce the laws, the people who set the tones are the leaders. we're going to listen to our local leaders but more importantly we have to stop ghting it seems that we're fighting religion, we fight morality, every time i turn on the tv there's all kinds of killings and the language is horrendous. i have a ten-year-old grandson and an eight-year-old grandson and finding something decent to watch is hard. in today's culture. just very quickly, russia was proven to want to create discord in our country.

i don't think they really cared who won whether it was hillary or trump. they love this. our enemies love when we are divided like this. host: armstrong williams. guest: you know, i respect everyone's opinion. we all get to where we are by experiences and the thing that is have shaped us. and i do think that we're too dwinded on the left and the right but we're -- divided on the left and the right but we're fighting something we've we all get never seen before. in the midst of covid-19 we said that the country would be shut down. people were self-quarantined and they found something that was significant where they were saying i'm no longer allowing myself to be locked down because i've got to step out and fight for humanity. if i get sick or even if i die. in that strength we have to find unity. we've got to see that we have far more in common not just the

covid virus now we're talking about the dissidents and the rioting in america. sometimes we don't want to mention because it's not polite society to say that god is trying to tell us something, that maybe there's a deeper meaning to this, maybe there's a spiritual illness that we need to take a closer look at. what i've found in my life with me is that the hardest work that i have to do is 24 hours a day working on myself. it's always easier to look at somebody else's faults and what somebody else is not doing and blame them but i find when i work on armstrong williams 24 hours a day something amazing happens. automatically the world improves around me especially me, armstrong wmings. while you criticize and do whatever you do don't forget we all need to work a little bit on making ourselves better to build greater part of this humanity. host: let me ask you about the

ash bri case february 23rd in the response of the district attorney. initially to that. this is what their decision not to prosecute initially they said we do not -- arrest. we do not see the grounds for arresting any of the three parties. it appears they were following in pursuit of a burglary suspect with solid first-hand probable cause in their neighborhood and telling him to stop. it appears their intent was to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement arrived. under georgia law this is perfectly legal. obviously that's changed. there have been three arrests in that case. what do you think that the actions of those, the alleged actions of those individuals says about -- and obviously two of them had an affiliation previously with the police department. what does it say about broader american society in terms of their watching people like this and taking police action into their own hands? guest: a very good observation.

it's the old boys network and we all have it. we have relationships that no matter what we do, whether it's killing somebody or killing a crime, you have people in the system that will cover for you and protect you because they put their friendship and relationship above the rule of law. and when you do this it has deaf stating consequences. the d.a., prosecutor -- and we don't talk about enough how unevenhanded prosecutors are and how they're responsible for a lot of the chaos that we see today because they pick and choose whom they want to prosecute. and when they prosecute them it's never the crime that they're being accused of. there needs to be an overall hah of this system. to me they're culprits in this too because mcmichael never had the authority to carry a gun, to arrest anyone. he lost that authority because never renewed his livesance

and he had other infractions which caused him to be suspended. obviously this guy who was taping and he had it. he wasn't taping it for a good reason. they assumed this would go away but it didn't because his family did not tolerate this injustice and they cried long enough the media, it blazed around the world. even if you look at what happened in central park with amy christian and look at what happened with -- amy cooper and christian cooper her trying to blame him saying she was being threatened. but video technology has brought this to light. if we did not have the technology we would not have known whether christian cooper was telling the truth or not. even ash bri. even with the videotape rolling oftenentitlements they still don't care. iteu it goes back to what the baseball tells us whatever is done in the darkness will come to light and the light is on in terms of technology and you can

no longer get away with this behavior framing people accusing them of crime and making these allegations without your being held accountable. and this is a good thing i would say. host: comment at twitter from shawn. how does rioting and looting bring justice for george floyd? caller: thank you for taking my call. good morning mr. williams. i have a positive comment to make. i am proud of my community for the protests they held yesterday as the police department marched with the protesters. i would like to know where the mayors and governors of this cities, the hiding behind their security blankets or on tv. they should have been out supporting the protesters like my community did that shows how leadership is done. guest: i saw a congresswoman,

may have been columbus, ohio, where she was out marching. she was maced just like all the other protesters. i'm not going to judge them for not being out protesting because there's so many things that are on their plates that they're navigating, they're dealing with. i think they should be on the front line but i'm not going to come to the conclusion that they do not care. host: armstrong williams, we asked michael star parker this question as well. the question about the cnn piece by john blake in last week on cnn the headline of his piece, there's one epidemic we may never find a vaccine for. fear of black men in public spaces. what's your personal experience of that and why do you think that there is this fear of white some white men some hites in general of black men? guest: listen, it's an optic.

if you look at the media if you look at the movies, if you look at entertainment with what is stereo typical of what it means to be if you look at the a blac relation to what they are. you never see the stereo types of people like somebody who is a pediatric neuro surgeon. you don't see enough of those stories like a robert smith who went to moorehouse college and gave a commencement address and decided with the graduating class he was going to underwrite everyone's college education. those stories are not sexy and they're not doing it because they're black, they're doing it because they carde, they're brilliant, bright and prepared for life. people don't commit crimes because of the color of their skin. they commit crime because of the behavior and trauma they've experienced in their lives. when you read the story about what happened in central park between amy and between christian a white woman and black man. no, it was a woman who was very

man iptive and who lied, and a mab who was very eloquent. you could tell that he had no mallice in his heart. he even asked the people, i saw him where they were trying to get him to criticize and cry racism. he said no i forgive her. what is the difference if she's going to call the cops on me and i could have lost my life and you're threatening her and threatening to destroy her way of life then i'm no different. those are the kind of examples that we need to have in the world. and media doesn't always do the best job they reinforce these stories. but tell good news. the bible tells us if there's something good you should tell that story also. so they are just as responsible for everybody else as to why that narrative continues to >> coming up shortly, the astronauts who arrived at the international space station will join the astronauts for a news conference.

atwill have live coverage 11:15. this afternoon the white house press secretary will brief reporters about protests in u.s. cities. you can watch that at 2:00 eastern on c-span or online at c-span.org. listen with the free c-span radio app. tonight, three democrats vying for the party nomination to take out mitch mcconnell join a special addition of kentucky educational television's kentucky tonight program. candidates will discuss their campaign platforms and why they are running. live coverage begins at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. on wednesday, former deputy attorney general rod rosen time testified before the senate judiciary committee on the fisa application process used during the fbi investigation into possible ties between the trump campaign and russian officials. the fbi investigation was taken

over by special counsel robert mueller who was appointed in 2017. watch live coverage of the hearing beginning at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span, on demand at c-span.org or listen live wherever you are on the free c-span radio app. ome on our facebook page as well. we'll start with a column in "the washington post," posted last night, printed this morning in "the washington post," and the headline, online, america is at a low ebb, shaken by multiple blows, and trump adds to the distress. this is the state of the union, as the nation