Ernest Hancock, the online radio host who interviewed the man with the assault rifle outside yesterday’s Obama event in Arizona, today stated that the whole event was actually planned in advance. Watch the video below.
Hancock appeared on Rick Sanchez’s CNN show this afternoon. After explaining a few details about the interview, including the tidbit that he’s known ‘Chris’ (the man with the AR-15) for two years because of their mutual work for Ron Paul, the CNN host said “the more we look into this, the more it appears that it was really planned.”
“Oh, it’s more planned than you think,” Hancock responded. He then let loose with a string of details, including how Hancock contacted the Phoenix police department days before the event and how he was partially motivated to do so because of the controversy surrounding William Kostric, the man armed with a gun outside of Obama’s town hall in New Hampshire last week.
We worked with the Phoenix police department. They came down to our studio on Friday. We’ve gone through this with them for 15 years.
They have a squad – used to be called the confrontation prevention squad, now called community service. We told them that we’re going to come down, I’m going to do the radio show live, we’re going to be broadcasting it, and I’m going to have a firearm. I had a 9 millimeter on myself…
It was Thursday that I called and talked to Al Ramirez, the representative from the Phoenix police department, and we were discussing – we’ve been around this rhetoric that was building up around William Kostric, who did this in New Hampshire. We knew this from 15 years ago when Janet Napolitano was a U.S. Assistant Attorney and prosecuted the Viper Militia out of Arizona, and how that was generated into something it wasn’t. We talked to Al and we were like, look, we know where this is going and we want to make sure, we come down, we’re peaceful, and we demonstrate the right of the people to carry their firearms. And the police protected our right.
They wanted to help – they assigned him [a police officer] to me. He was never more than 4-5 feet away from me. We had law enforcement around us to protect our rights to protect this firearm.
In the 8-minute interview, Sanchez did not bring up the issue of the incident taking place at a presidential event. There was also no discussion on the other dozen people who were reportedly armed at Obama’s VFW event in Phoenix.
Most of the interview was spent in a back-and-forth between the two men on the planning of the event, and whether what Hancock did was ‘disingenuous’ as a ‘publicity stunt.’ Hancock also appeared to make a small reference to astroturf/tea party activists when he said “you have these people coming in by the busload, there to create a scandal” but for his and Chris’s part, “we’re all friends, we were having a good time, and the event was more peaceful.”
Here’s the rest of the interview:
Sanchez: A lot of people are going to look at this and say it was a publicity stunt.
Hancock: Absolutely – you guys are so easy. What we wanted to do was make sure that people around the country knew that law enforcement in Phoenix, Arizona protects our rights. Oftentimes, the citizenry are better armed than law enforcement. They need us on their side. We know what we’re up against.
Sanchez: You’re the only ones there with weapons. What are you up against? Ladies with brooms?
Hancock: Oh no, no, no, we’re up against a tyrannical government that will rob the next generation as long as they can get away with it. If you go to Freedomsphoenix.com, the top story is the interview I had with this young man. Quite simply, [Chris] understands that his generation is going to be plundered until there’s nothing left to plunder. When you do that, at some point, there will be resistance.
Sanchez: Where is Chris, by the way?
Hancock: Hiding from you.
Sanchez: The only thing I’m questioning is whether you have to do it in such a disingenuous way – it was a fake interview with fake circumstances.
Hancock: We made it very clear that we knew each other on the video – I see him all the time.
Sanchez: Does [Chris] really believe this stuff? Because the way he was laughing in the video-
Hancock: If you’re not having fun advocating for freedom, you’re doing it wrong.
