Fmr. FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi spoke with Brian Williams on MSNBC about Donald Trump’s white supremacist rhetoric and how extremists interpret it. Figliuzzi is also very concerned about who is behind the president’s speeches.
Said Figliuzzi: “The president’s either getting really good advice and rejecting it, or he’s getting really bad advice. We have to understand the adversary and the threat we’re dealing with, and if we don’t understand how they think we’ll never understand how to counter them, so it’s the little things and the language and messaging that matters.”
Then Figliuzzi gave a chilling example: “The president says that we will fly our flags at half-mast until August 8, that’s 8/8. Now I’m not going to imply that he did this deliberately, but I am using it as an example of the ignorance of the adversary that’s being demonstrated by the White House. The numbers 8/8 are very significant in the neo-Nazi and the white supremacy movement. Why? Because the letter ‘H’ is the 8th letter of the alphabet, and to them, the numbers 8/8 stand for “Heil Hitler.” So we’re going to be raising the flag back up at dusk on 8/8. No one’s thinking about this. No one’s giving the advice, or he’s rejecting the advice.”
Here’s the full segment:
