Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/5/23: Trump On Trial - Breaking Points Live Recording

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

Krystal and Saagar are joined by Ryan and Emily to break down and analyze the Trump Trial. They're joined by legal experts Bradley Moss (@BradMossEsq) and Josh Hammer (@josh_hammer) to give their opposite perspectives, we talk the Chicago Mayor race, the Wisconsin Supreme court, and we answer questions from our premium subscribers.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hey, guys. Ready or not, 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Oh my God. Good evening, everybody.

Feels a little weird to say that. We have an amazing show for everybody today. A primetime show with the full crew, counterpoints, breaking points, everybody coming together to talk about the Trump indictment, the arraignment, the arrest, the drama of it all. It's just amazing.

I know we did a reaction video for everybody already, Crystal, but what do we have today? Major crossover episode here. The breaking points and counterpoints, teams colliding in real live primetime. It's all happening. So we're going to go through everything that we learned today. Obviously, the charges were unsealed. We saw Trump in court pleading not guilty. So we're going to go through everything that we learned today. Obviously, the charges were unsealed. We saw Trump in court pleading not guilty. So we're going to go through that, get Emily and Ryan's reactions as well, because Sagar and I got to talk about it a little bit earlier today.

Talk a little bit about the potential political impact, such as we know thus far. Take a look at the polling that has been conducted, how the American people feel about these charges, how's it going to impact Trump in the Republican primary and potentially in the general election? We also are going to take live whatever Trump is doing this evening. It's being billed as a press event. Is he going to take questions? Is it going to be more of a speech? Is he going to, you know, is he going to go on for a long time? Is it going to be like tightly scripted?

We will see. We'll take all of that live. And then on the other side of that, we also have legal analysts who are on sort of either side of this issue of whether or not he should have been charged in this particular case. So we can get their takes as well and ask them all the questions that we have and that you guys have. Speaking of that, premium subscribers have been submitting questions. We're going to be going through some of those throughout the course of the night. We're going to be continuing to take a look at them live as we are going through the stream. So become a premium subscriber, submit your question. If you're already a premium subscriber and you have a question for any of us or for the legal analysts or whatever, something pops up to your mind, make sure to submit those

because we will be taking a look at them. That's right. Breakingpoints.com to go and sign up for that. We've already got a couple here that our producer Griffin is sending along and we will certainly get to. So, wow. I mean, I know it's already been kind of a crazy day. Crystal, we have some video, some audio of some of the things that have already gone down here. What should we start with? Yeah, so let's take a look at, we'll go sort of sequentially here. First, we have the specter of Trump actually arriving at the courthouse. We've got kind of like an overhead view there.

You can see zooming in the drone footage or helicopter footage or whatever. This is his motorcade arriving at the courthouse courtesy of CNN. Let's go ahead and take a look at this next picture that we have that you can see him like waving to the crowd as he steps out and walks towards the courthouse. We also did get released one image of what he actually looked like sitting there in the courtroom. You can take a look at that. He's looking very sort of like- Bit dour. Bit dour. That's a good word for it. Grim. He'd rather be somewhere else. What's that?

He'd rather be somewhere else. Probably rather be somewhere else, even though this may inure to his political benefit, at least in the Republican primary. Still probably not loving having to sit in court and be out of control of his circumstances in a way that he really doesn't like to be. We did get the charges unsealed. I mean, frankly, my TLDR is, it's very much what we were expecting. Yeah, absolutely. 34 counts. It's all about falsifying business records. The whole reason that it's getting bumped up to this felony charge is because of the idea that this was a cover-up that has to do with federal election fraud, effectively. And there was a statement of facts that also was released that really seeks to lay out the sequence of

events, lay out, okay, the Stormy Daniels payments, also talks about the Karen McDougal payments, also talks about these doorman payments that I completely forgot about back at the recesses of my memory. And really, is it pains to lay out some what they consider to be evidence that these payments had to do directly with the 2016 campaign? And of course, legally, that is extremely significant. The whole reason that John Edwards was not found guilty on his campaign charges is because they couldn't determine that the payments were directly about the campaign. Of course, Trump's defense will say this could have been about saving his marriage or any number of other things. So there had been some

speculation, Ryan, ahead of time that perhaps there were some other pieces here. Maybe there'd be a conspiracy charge. They were digging into Karen McDougal. Maybe there was something in there that we really didn't even know about that he had uncovered in the process of this investigation. Not so much. And you did see Karen McDougal show up in the statement of facts, but not in the indictment. Yes. It seems like bad luck for the prosecutors in that the National Enquirer's attorney was like, yeah, this could be a crime. So let's not do this. It says that in the statement of facts that basically, and the most guilty Trump appears in the entire thing is when he's on tape with Cohen saying, why don't we do

this payoff in cash? Yes. And Cohen's like, in cash? $150,000 in cash? No, let's do a check. And then they figure out complicated ways that they can move this check. And then, but then AMI, which is the Inquirer, they end up paying for it instead. And there's some agreement, according to Cohen, that they're going to reimburse them.

But then the National Inquirer General Counsel is like, no. Right. Like, why are you going to do this? Yes. The best part, the best thing they have to show that this is election related and not Melania and shame related. Right. Was Trump trying to slow walk the payment to Stormy Daniels past the election and then saying to her, guess what? You're screwed twice now.

We're not paying you at all. Yeah. Which shows that because, you know, let her say it publicly what you're still planning on being married to Melania. So that really does like make the point that it is about election. It was about the election. I have that part of the statement of fact, Emily, that I can read to you and get your your top line reactions here. They write that the defendant, that's Trump, directed lawyer A, that's Michael Cohen, to delay making a payment to Stormy Daniels as long as possible. Trump instructed Michael Cohen that if they could delay the payment until after the election, they could avoid paying altogether because at that point it would not matter if the story became public as reflected in emails, text messages between and among lawyer A, lawyer B, and the AMI editor-in-chief, that's David Packer.

Michael Cohen attempted to delay making the payment as long as possible. So, I mean, that really jumped out at me as well because, of course, it's very difficult to prove what somebody's mindset was at the time. Like, was this just for the campaign or was it for the marriage or was it some sense of shame from Trump that we've, you know, heretofore never seen before? Could be, right? This is as close to Trump just being like, this is 100% only about the campaign and after I'm elected, I do not care about it as you could possibly get. Yeah. And I mean, we all kind of know that instinctually. I mean, Donald Trump, he's Donald Trump. He's been talking to

tabloids about his personal sexual relationships for decades. But in this particular case, he can still come back because even with that, he can still come back and say, well, they weren't going to raise the issue if I'm not a candidate. So here's why that's my reasoning, because it doesn't matter if I'm not a candidate to them, not just to me, to them. And so that's where you get into a case, which is so far from clear cut that it's painful for me because, again, it's very much an unprecedented. I've heard a lot of people on the right call this like a crossing the Rubicon moment where you're charging a former president. Now, that's not to say that Donald Trump has done absolutely nothing worthy of being charged. I think we're all we can all look at numerous different allegations against Donald Trump,

and maybe that's the most important takeaway from today, is that this is the tip of the iceberg. There have already been allegations raised in The Washington Post in the last couple of days about what the special counsel is finding. I think those are strategic leaks along the lines of what we saw from Russiagate. But there have already been, there's already leaking suggesting that case is much more serious than people realize. We've heard legal analysts like Barr. Barr himself has said that that case is turning out to be very, very serious. You have Georgia and a hungry DA in Georgia who looks like she wants to do the same thing. So this really could be just the beginning for Donald Trump. Yeah, I absolutely agree with you.

From everybody that I've seen as well, the most serious-minded legal analyst that I trust, everybody's like, look, I think this one is pretty frivolous. I'm not even sure if it's necessarily going to pass the smell test for a judge. They're like, but on the classified documents one, that one's a real problem because, A, you have the obstruction charge. B, they have the ability to subpoena the Secret Service about Trump himself and his own relationship,

like sifling through these documents. You also have his lawyers violating their attorney-client privilege because he basically got them to maybe possibly lie on his behalf, making it materially interesting. I do want to come back, though, to the facts of why we're all gathered here today. This specific arrest and indictment. We are gathered here today. we're all gathered here today. This specific arrest and indictment. Why are we gathered here today? I think it's very interesting, Ryan. We are talking here at the end

of the day about this campaign crime. And by the way, I will say personally, I believe that Trump is guilty as hell on the campaign charge. That said, he is not guilty in the eyes of the law because the federal authorities who have jurisdiction over this crime never charged him. Interestingly enough, what's happened is that in 2021 with this campaign charge, it was specifically decided by federal prosecutors not to indict Trump after he left the White House. I know that initially there was also the Barr case of making prosecutors drop the charges against Trump saying, we're going to abide by DOJ guidance. We cannot indict a sitting president. Second, and this is what's interesting in terms of what you have to prove,

A, is it even possible for a Manhattan DA to prove the commission of this campaign finance fraud in New York state, given the fact that New York state law here is not actually what governs the overall campaign infrastructure, because that's ultimately what Michael Cohen pled guilty to. The reason, guys, that we're spending time on this is because the way that all of this becomes a felony is that the bookkeeping charge itself has to be made in the commission and the coverup of a separate crime. And in that, what they have to prove is,

A, it's never been tried before to try and prove a federal crime as a coverup crime in New York State. And two, as I understand it, it can't just help, it can't just be for this crime to have been to help the campaign. For example, painting the outside of your business or settling lawsuits aren't campaign expenditures. It has to actually be the sole purpose,

like polling or Rent-A-Ware HQ. Now, from the message itself, I would personally say if I were to be presented this on a federal grand jury, yeah, I would be like, this is probably the messages itself. I would personally say if I were to be presented this on a federal grand jury or a federal jury, yeah, I would be like, this is probably the sole purpose. That said, I mean, look, there are 11 other peers

that would have to agree with me. Trump would be able to mount a competent defense. And I think that's why we're all going to have to spend so much time in not even whether he looks guilty. He absolutely looks guilty.

But he's in the eyes of the law. He's not guilty of this crime, has not been convicted of this crime. Right, has not been convicted of this crime. Right, has not been convicted of this crime. Well, in federal court, which is where ultimately the actual jurisdiction of this charge takes place, which is why, again, we're all gathered here and why 34 counts of felony actual bookkeeping fraud were charged against Trump. So we have to spend a ton of time on this. Yeah. I mean, I do think there is a New York state election law that they are also invoking here that is relevant to the case. And these are all details that I definitely

want to ask both of our legal guests about to zoom out for a second. Like I sort of can't help but laugh at this whole scenario because of everything that Trump did, right. Trying to steal the election and allegedly hiding these documents, sorting through the documents after he was told that you have to hand him over and he claimed to hand it, all the stuff that he did, not to mention the war crimes that we just take for granted that American presidents all commit at this point. Of all those things, it's some tawdry porn star bullshit. And in some ways, it's like, actually, it's fitting, right? I mean, that's why I couldn't help laughing to myself

about, like, that it's this one that's the first one to drop because in some ways it is kind of perfect and gets this juxtaposition of all the different lenses that you can view Donald Trump through. Like, is he just this sort of ridiculous reality star who like bumbled his way, tripped over his own dick into the White House? Right. Or is he this like, you know, fascist mastermind inciting his supporters to go and, you know, riot at the Capitol and with these elaborate schemes to overturn the election?

And I mean, I guess the answer is a little bit of both. But that's why I've got, I just have a lot of complex feelings about this. Because the other piece of this is I would like to see more white collar criminals prosecuted, not less. I would like to see more former presidents prosecuted, not less. So when I hear these, this hand, oh my God, the president, and God forbid that we like hold future presidents accountable for their crimes. I'm like, good, that would be a good thing. On the other hand, I do look at this and feel that it is far from the worst thing that Trump did in office. It's not even close to the worst thing that Obama did in office or Bush did in office, let alone Donald Trump. Yeah, and what it seems like they're trying to do is to not break the precedent

of prosecuting former presidents. And so they take something that no other president is ever gonna do. Yes, smart. And that's have some type of a- That's true. Unique to Trump himself. The other things too,

completely reckless handling of classified information. Like even the worst war criminals that we've had in the last four years, they're sensitive. Even if they need it by their Mustang. Yeah, but he's not like going through it. He's not touching it. Right.

He's not moving it around and lying to people, lying to his own lawyers. That would be unseemly, Ryan. It would be unseemly not to have the help to do it for you. Yeah, exactly. And the corruption that is, that circles Trump all of the time. And you know, you could have, you could have

prosecuted him over the postal museum that he, you know, the little Trump, little Trump restaurant that he had. And he's got all of these foreign governments overpaying and then telling him, hey, we're overpaying for this particular thing. And then his, he and his family walk out like fabulously rich. But to go after that would set a precedent that you're going to start prosecuting those types of crimes. And even though Trump is more brazen about it, the rest are still doing it within the same cut. Yeah, I like this. That's actually a really great point. You're not going to have a problem where you're like Joe Biden paid hush money to a porn star. Right. Probably. His son maybe. Yeah, His son, maybe.

Yeah, his son, but he's not a president. So you can prosecute Hunter, right? Theoretically. He does have a grandchild. He doesn't acknowledge. I do like your point though, Ryan. And I think that's why it's important. You know, if we were thinking about Bush, I put on my Fahrenheit 9-11 days, you know, it's like, well, if we do start going after profits and all that, maybe we have to start talking about the Carlisle group. It's like, oh no, I can't be doing that. There are way too many people in this town who are not made one of them the governor of virginia many other people who are far too connected and wealthy off of a system like that or even jared could i mean that's always the one that fascinates me the fara violations that all of these former presidents and their aides are all deeply entangled in from the bush

family obama and his White House chief of staff is now working for TikTok as a lobbyist. You're like, what the hell is going on here? When you're looking at that, that's well accepted within the realm of corruption. Trump, you have to go after him, as you said, for what we all know him as, as the reality TV star. We do, though, have the video of Alvin Bragg that I think is actually worth playing that gets to what we were discussing here about the legal theories under which the eventual indictment actually took place. We're going to go ahead and play A6 here, guys. Let's take a listen to that. Under New York state law is a felony to falsify business records with intent to defraud and intent to conceal another crime. That is exactly what this case is about.

34 false statements made to cover up other crimes. These are felony crimes in New York State. No matter who you are, we cannot and will not normalize serious criminal conduct. So that's what he was getting at there, Crystal, in terms of the charges that he laid out. Interestingly, I do want to note that initially in the statement of fact, there was a mention of taxes. Now, you and I immediately picked up on that in our reaction video because the reason is that Bragg actually does have jurisdiction over New York state taxes, obviously. But in the three crimes that Bragg lays out in his statement, not one of them that he mentioned actually had anything to do with taxes. Ryan, Emily, did you guys pick up on that? He talked specifically about defrauding the public

in terms of a campaign finance violation, then pointing, as you said, Crystal, to the New York State campaign law. And then third, the actual bookkeeping fraud itself. That, though, is the misdemeanor, the actual cover-up crime. He is solely focusing here on campaign finance. Ryan Adler, what did you guys make of that? Well, that's how you get it to where he needs it to be. That's where he gets it to the level of severity where he can go and make a statement like that and pitch it to the public as saying this is worth prosecuting a former president over. And so I think that's where I think that's where that's coming from is partially legal maneuver. Let me read from the statement of fact just to dig into what Sager is referencing here. They do go to some length to lay out that they sort of structured these payments to be deceitful and

probably tax advantageous in a way that could indicate fraud. So it is interesting that they didn't use that as like, oh, this is the cover up that we're using to get it to a felony account. So they say that the Trump Organization CFO and lawyer A, that's Michael Cohen, agreed to a total repayment of $420K. They reached that figure, blah, blah, blah, we don't care how they reached that figure. The Trump Organization CFO then doubled the amount to $360K so that Lawyer A could characterize the payment as income on his tax returns instead of a reimbursement, and Lawyer A would be left with $180K after paying about 50% in income taxes. Finally, the Trump Organization CFO

added an additional 60k as a supplemental year-end bonus. Isn't that nice for him? Year-end crime bonus. Got his man elected president. What an insane way to run a business. Together, these amounts totaled 420k. The Trump Organization CFO memorialized these calculations in handwritten notes on a copy of the bank statement that lawyer A had provided. So, um, and there are some other things here about taxes, but that was the primary paragraph that was focused on like the way they structured payments and how they didn't really record it properly from a tax perspective. And I guess what I heard earlier today, now I'm becoming like a legal expert on intricacies, this particular type of business fraud, is that the cover-up doesn't have to be of your own crime. It could be of anyone's crime.

So if Michael Cohen is guilty of tax fraud here, it could have been in service of that. But again, to Sager's point, that isn't actually the theory that Bragg seems to have leaned into. Right. And what they seem to be doing is that if they had to list it as a reimbursement, then they'd have to say, well, what was it a reimbursement for? And so it's really in furtherance of the cover up. So they called it income so that they don't have to talk about why they did it. But I think that saying that Cohen, that Trump is trying to cover up a crime that Cohen committed doesn't comport with what we understand about Trump.

Trump has never done anything for anybody else, ever. True. This would be the first two acts that he ever committed on behalf of other people. And romantic, as you've mentioned before, Valentine's Day. If you read it, February 14th, 2017, Ryan often rightfully points out Trump doesn't get the credit he deserves for being a romantic. Oh, yeah, that's true. And here we are.

Nobody's mentioning it. Yeah. There you go. The media is silent. That's true. I do remember covering some Valentine's Day at the White House. You always made sure to mention Melania. I guess that's the bare minimum that you do for your beloved wife.

But, yeah. Yeah. I mean, the problem seems to be it all comes back to the question of whether there was a crime and we can all think there was, but it does seem problematic for a county prosecutor to be able to try to persuade a county jury that a federal crime was committed when the federal prosecutors themselves declined to prosecute. That's why I just can't take it away from them. Think about the precedent that that would set, because then you don't need jurisdiction anymore. Any county prosecutor can say, well, these bookkeeping errors were made in QuickBooks,

and QuickBooks exists in Montgomery, Alabama. Yeah, that's right. So we're prosecuting. I think that's a really, really important point because the people who are cheerleading this particular situation, I think all of us sort of share this ambivalence. We don't really know in that bigger picture question how to think Banana Republic argument when you have to do legal gymnastics to prosecute a former president in a case that actually is weak compared to potential other cases that are out there. And so when you start setting dangerous precedents, the people who are cheerleading this as a victory for democracy, who are constantly accusing Donald Trump of being the antithesis of democracy, being the ultimate villain in the great story, the great arc of democracy, may actually be doing an equal amount of damage to that question of democracy.

So let me provide the counter view, just to put it out there, which is, you know, kind of similar to what Alvin Bragg said. I don't think anyone here is denying that Trump committed some crimes with regard to this particular situation. It looks like a misdemeanor. I think we can say that. And by the way, by the way, let me also say that while it's certainly not anywhere close to the worst thing that he did at the time that he was making these payments, this was in the fallout of Access Hollywood. And now, in hindsight, we realize he was able to overcome that and win the election over Hillary. But at the time, they were deeply concerned that if you had Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels and all of this litany of whatever come out at the time, that it would

damage his campaign and he would lose. And there's some merit to that. That is possible. So all of the concern about like Russian memes and whatever, there's no doubt that this sequence of events and their attempt to hide these stories and to engage in bookkeeping fraud and campaign finance violations and whatever to cover it up, it wasn't nothing. And I do feel like, okay, if any of us had committed this sort of fraud, like we would probably have the book thrown at us. It doesn't require legal gymnastics to see that there were, there was wrongdoing here. And so if you truly want a system where, you know, there's not two tier system of justice, then, you know, it's appropriate for him to have to face consequences for this, even as it doesn't

rise to the level of some of the other crimes that he committed. Like the fact that he committed other worse crimes doesn't negate the fact that there were lower level things that were done here. But then I think to stretch them to felony level is a different question. To do the legal gymnastics to get to felony level, I do think it's a different question. But I agree with that. And I agree with your point about, I would love to see more white collar criminals charged. I would love to talk about how Biden is implicated in Hunter Biden's very shady lobbying. I think there's something very real there. I think we should have those conversations. We could go back to Bush and Obama and have those conversations. We could talk about what's happening with TikTok right now and lobbying and all of that.

But at the end of the day, I also think we need to have a sort of consensus as a country on what that looks like. And we just don't in a very scary way. We can go back to Comey talking about Hillary Clinton essentially being guilty but not raising to the level that a prosecutor would bring the case. Well, and that's where I'm like, yeah, maybe they like, I'm good with her being locked up too. Lock her up. Hey, it's been a while since I've been able to do this.

This actually, this brings us actually to, we're basically answering or debating a premium question. So we might as well take our first. This is from Ethan Gerlich, Reciprocity. Do you think this indictment, and if convicted, the conviction will make it easier, more acceptable to invite or charge other politicians for their various crimes?

Long time follower, love breaking points on you guys. We love you too, Ethan. I mean, that kind of gets to what we're discussing. I guess it all just comes back to the original point that Ryan made is, well, what crimes are we talking about here? So insider trading, yeah, let's go. Let's roll, right? Let the SEC and the federal prosecutors. That said, that hasn't ever happened. I mean, even in one of the most clear cut cases ever, the Richard Burr case, straight up insider trading. The FBI seized his phone.

Nothing happened to the guy. Still haven't heard anything about it two or three years later. And somehow, we're all twisting ourselves in knots here. Manhattan DA is to indict felony bookkeeping fraud on 34 different counts. That is where we could see, obviously, the dichotomy of what this might look like. So do you guys think that this will pave the way to the type of crimes that I think all of us,

including especially the Breaking Points audience, wants to see politicians actually get charged with. I honestly don't think so. I actually just think Ryan's point stands. The establishment is still so strong. But the establishment might not be able to contain what they unleash. It's possible.

I think that they're doing this on purpose this way so that they can try to cordon off themselves from any type of future accountability. But there will be so much appetite for revenge next time around. Like, oh, well, if you did this, so now we're going to come for you. And when they start to come for their opposition, they're going to go for whatever. And so they might end up, and there might be so much pressure on them to make a case that they might have to make an actual corruption case.

And then the Supreme Court will say that there is no such thing as corruption. Yeah, we forgot. I fundamentally think the obstacle to that happening is the media's disinterest. I think you can't fix this without a genuinely curious and skeptical fourth estate. I think this is a media, I think we were all watching MSNBC and CNN today. Unfortunately, I forced myself to do it just for everybody here. It is though. Well, I needed to, really what I needed was to see sort of every inch of Trump's day.

I wanted to watch it, but a second by second breakdown on camera. But in all honesty, so long as you have MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, the entire corporate media establishment cheerleading for the selective prosecution. Let's set this case aside. Let's talk about the entire, I think, approach to Trump while also ignoring or doing what they did in the lead up to the 2020 election with the Hunter Biden story. Again, I'm not trying to make, I'm not trying to draw equivalences here. I'm just trying to say it is obvious the media has a pattern of selective prosecution, selective interest in corruption. They'll have interest in corruption if it's an anti-establishment Democrat.

They'll have an interest in corruption if it's an anti-establishment Republican. It doesn't matter. They are a uniparty in favor of the political establishment. So as long as they control the political discourse in this country, I don't think this changes things. I think maybe it does pave the way for prosecutors, maybe in red states. And Brian's right. There is a question of precedent here. If you start having prosecutors in red states do one thing, but if the media tells the public that that's bullshit and what Bragg did is totally legitimate, then that's a huge obstacle.

I think you're right. I sort of buy the idea. You know, I think about, I'm thinking here we are 20 years later in Iraq war, like thinking a lot back over that whole trajectory and the media journalists who like were stenographers for the Bush administration and who fed these lies and not only suffered no professional consequences,

many of them are like wealthier and more powerful than ever before. Many of them are central players and commentators in this whole drama. Some of them are on MSNBC tonight, right? Yeah, some of them are literally lying. There are no consequences, to Ryan's point, to committing a crime or telling a lie or making a giant mistake as long as it's in the like accepted DC way in service of like whatever the establishment narrative is. Or I think to carry it over into relevance, like with the criminal legal world, if you're doing the same crimes that

everybody else is doing, you're probably safe because they're not going to want to open the can of worms of like, oh, let's actually be serious about insider trading. Let's actually be serious about corruption. Let's actually be serious about war crimes because everyone's implicated. And so I do think that the things that will that this opens the door for are the more like more brazen or more outside of the traditional carved out space of DC crime. I think those are the pieces that are likely to be prosecuted more. And I can't say that that's like that I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry that it won't also touch the sort of parts of, you know, criminality in. that just become accepted as a part of

doing business here. But the idea of more politicians facing more charges for the crimes that they commit, I'm not going to cry about that one. Yeah, I think. Well, why don't we talk about the politics, Crystal, and the polls and all of that? So I know that we have a little bit. Yeah. So let's go ahead. Let's go and put the CNN poll. This is the most recent one out about how people feel about the actual charges. Now, I do want to say this predates us actually getting to see the specific charges, but everybody had a pretty good idea of where we were headed with these. So go ahead and put B1 up on the screen from CNN. What you can see is that it breaks down, unsurprisingly, on long party lines. 94% of Democrats approve of the decision from Alvin Bragg to indict Trump. 79% of Republicans

disapprove. 62% of independents approve. And overall, you have a solid majority, 60% of Americans who approve of Trump's indictment. And my analysis of this, and I'd be curious what you guys think, is that, you know, you've got about 60% of the country that really doesn't like Trump, and they don't actually care that much about the details. They feel like,

and I kind of understand, like, they feel like this is a man who has gotten away with so much for so long that now I'm going to be like, oh, but not this way. Like, not this particular, oh, and you're going to stretch it to a fellow. I don't know about that. So I think you just get a gut. It's a Rorschach test. Like if you think Trump has been a lawless criminal for a lot of his life, then you're not

going to like be worried that Alvin Bragg, you know, stretch the definition of the charge or whatever. You're going to be like, good, this dude is finally getting what's coming to him. And if you're on the other side of that and you like Trump and you believe in him and you think he's been unfairly treated, then you're going to obviously be opposed. Also, no matter what the specific details are, because let's not pretend that that 40 percent or so or all the, you know, 79% of Republicans who are against these charges wouldn't also be against January 6th charges, wouldn't also be against classified document charges, wouldn't also be against like fake elector scheme charges. What do you guys think? Go ahead, Ryan. Yeah, there's, right. I think, I think that's, I think that's well said. So

the fact that the charges basically came out exactly as people kind of thought they were means we can basically, I think, extrapolate from that to where we are today. Emily, I'd be curious how you square that with the Trump camp celebration today of what a political win this is for them. Because part of me also feels like they're not wrong about that.

Well, it is a political win. In the short term. In the Republican primary, no doubt. Yet also, more than half the country wants him in jail. We're in such an amazing place right now. Wherever there's a black and white, Trump has succeeded in terms of wherever the political establishment creates it. Like impeachments is a good example. Creates a situation where it looks unprecedented or it looks like a witch hunt, whatever.

Whenever that happens, Trump benefits from it. But that's a very different question, I think, when you have Hillary Clinton not as the foil, when you potentially have a Joe Biden presidency in the rearview mirror where he's passed legislation that some people really like. I think that all changes the equation. Trump's internal polling, this is from Philip Wegman at RCP. He reported that Trump's internal campaign polling looks like Trump v. DeSantis, 51-21. 51-21. Trump v. Biden, 47-43. So his internals have him up on Biden. Now, I don't know how good those numbers are. The Trump campaign, obviously it makes sense that they're going out there with this and celebrating it. It's not helpful ever in a general election. And I think that's a ridiculous thing for Republicans to say. I think it's a cope that Republicans are saying. Does this mean that there are 5% to 10% of the

country who would answer, I think these charges are good and I would support him for president? Yeah. Actually, honestly, there definitely are people. But there are. The numbers say there's 5 to 10% of the country that feels that way. But that's another important thing to emphasize. Let me get to that. Trump said repeatedly on the campaign trail, that makes me smart. When he talked about the way he exploited tax loopholes. When he talked about, whereas Joe Biden will never address the fact that he routed his book money through an S-Corp.

Joe Biden, Donald Trump would come out and be like, hell yeah, I did. It makes me smart. He'd be like, you would do the same thing. It's baked into the Trump cake. And I think that sucks. I don't think that's a great precedent to set at all. I never liked it. And I think it made conservatives look really foolish a lot of the time. But it's completely expected of Donald Trump. And people know that that's how he conducts business. This is the interesting thing I want to pick up on the politics front of this. Let's go to the next one. Crystal, you and I spent some time on this in our show with the Tearsheet B2 guys, please. In the same poll, 62% of Americans, including 93% of Republicans, 70% of independents, and 66% of Democrats, they're like, yeah, we do think it was

motivated by politics, though. So even the people who all support the case and do think that he's guilty, or not necessarily in the case of Republicans, they're like, yeah, I still think it's political. So if you do think it's political, then see, that's where I come back to what you said, Ryan, where they're like, yeah, I definitely think he's guilty. But, you know, it's a wash and I don't like Joe Biden. So, yeah, I think it was political. And, you know, it doesn't really matter to me. I'm voting more on gas prices or Ukraine or the economy or Biden can't speak or Trump is a criminal, whatever. Those people, like when things are political, it's a wash.

Like this used to come back. I used to always come back to this, you know, after 2016. Before 2016, everyone was like, can you believe Trump's approval rating? By the way, as if Hillary's wasn't as bad. But the case was he still had some 66 million people who were willing to vote for him. Two thirds said, I do not like this man. I don't like him. And then he got 10 million more votes the second time around after like i hate this guy i wouldn't i would never let in my house i would not be friends with this person i don't want to be around i don't want him as a neighbor but i'm going to vote for him for

president united states i mean look i get it right like that's a deep animating thing in our politics. That's what you get when you have two likely nominees that are profoundly unpopular. One of whom is like sundowning before our eyes and the next heartbeat away is someone who is even more unpopular than these two guys. So, yeah, you have people who are like, I literally want this man in prison. And also, I'm really not sure. And it's the same thing with Jeb Bush. It's like most Republican primary voters in 2016 voted against Donald Trump, which at the time was a vote against Donald Trump. It wasn't like you were just, oh, I'm really I'm a big Rubio person. People were a big Rubio person, but they were or Cruz or whatever.

It was spread out between many, many people, but they mostly were taking votes against Donald Trump. If you're voting for Donald Trump, you're voting for Donald Trump. And that again has continued over and over because the foil is Jeb freaking Bush, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden. And who's it next? Gavin Newsom, Andrew Cuomo. I mean, seriously, like it just, it's, it's exactly why we are where we are because there is no serious answer from the Republican or Democratic party to Donald Trump or to the some of the arguments he makes that have validity. They don't all, but some of them do. So I think we all will probably agree in terms of the Republican primary. This is nothing but good for him.

The trial is going to be playing out like at the height of the prime. I mean, nothing could be in 2024. Literally, DeSantis should just not run. I'm actually like at this point, this is kind of his moment. I just don't see it. I don't see it. So we'll put that as a motion to dismiss. But yeah, yeah, well, yes, true. We'll put that to the side because I do think the impact on the general election is a lot less clear. And here's why. I can see a world where it's basically a wash, where people just, you know, they know all this stuff about Trump. They live through January 6th. They live through the fake electors. It's sort of like baked into the cake.

They're also not happy with Joe Biden. And so it's sort of a jump ball. But we did see, Ryan, in the midterm elections that Trump was a real weight around the GOP. And specifically because of January 6th and Stop the Steal and all of the chaos. And him and his candidates were very much repudiated. So if you have overhanging the general election in 2024, him dealing with legal woes to do with, you know, January 6th documents, stop the steal, all of those sorts of things. I do think that that could be much more damaging to him than honestly I would have thought before the midterm results. Yeah. And the raid on Mar-a-Lago played so handily into Democratic fortunes that there was a lot of speculation that Democrats did it just for the purpose of getting Trump back into the midterms. Either way,

no matter how the decision was made, once that decision was made, Democrats wanted to talk about nothing else other than Trump. And they used Mar-a-Lago and this document handling as the excuse to do that. And that did seem to work. Like that did seem to drag Republicans down. And so, you know, Democrats have no credibility whatsoever on this question because in 2016, Hillary Clinton did her Pied Piper thing. She's like, this is the guy that we're going to be able to easily beat. We know how that ended.

Right. Yet 2020, they were convinced they could beat him and they beat him. 2022, they wanted him out in the him and they beat him 2022. They wanted him out in the field. They thought it would help them. It did help them. So maybe they've won some of their credibility back on this playing with fire because they've also gone out and played in all these Republican primaries, helping all these MAGA candidates win huge, taking a huge risk with the future of the country. I think they won every single one of those. So they do seem like they want this guy out there. Look, to me, it's one of those where

how can you disaggregate Stop the Steal from abortion? Because abortion was such a clear, massive winner for the Democrats that you could be learning the wrong lesson. Like how much does Stop the Steal matter? We actually really don't know. And then how much did Stop the Steal insanity play into, well, if they're willing to go full r-word

On stop the steal like does that mean they will do the same thing whenever it comes to abortion man Whenever somebody says then you're an extremist you're like yeah Maybe I should just sit this one out Trump though is actually a lot smarter than most Republicans on abortion He actively is missing himself from Roe versus Wade. He's like yeah, I got it done But also I wouldn't be doing what a lot of these other people are doing There's not a single other Republican literally in the entire country who is willing to do that let alone the most from Roe versus Wade. He's like, yeah, I got it done, but also I wouldn't be doing what a lot of these other people are doing. There's not a single other Republican literally in the entire country who is willing to do that,

let alone the most popular person. So I don't think it would be as easy to like beat over the head for Joe Biden and others. Same thing whenever it comes to Medicare, Social Security, you could say whatever you want about the man, especially on tax policy, but on entitlements itself, you could not attack him saying

that this is something that you wanted to do. So what do you think about that, Emily, like in the general election lens? I just, I respect Trump too much as a politician to say, do not ever count this man out. I know he's a clown, but listen, you know, clown got a lot of votes. He has political skills. Weirdly. But, and I think part of that comes from being an entertainer, of course, as people as people have mentioned over the years. But I do think it's it's important that everything we're talking about gets this issue of polarization and that what one thing energizes the Republican turnout, Democratic turnout. I actually think we're going to get a hint of this in Wisconsin Supreme Court election, which I know we're going to talk about a little bit tonight. Yeah. Just in terms of turnout, you know, when you have a third of the country in the camp that's like prosecute him, it's political, but it's still

okay because we got to get him on something. Like he's done so many things over the years. We got to get him on something. He deserves it. He skated too many times when you have that 30% and 30% that's like, which hunt, this is how I end up going out to vote, et cetera, et cetera, then you have that remaining portion of the country, maybe the normal portion of the country that's just like, what the hell is going on? I'm exhausted by this. We litigated Stormy Daniels four years ago, five years ago. Why am I hearing the name again? I don't know who Karen McDougal is, but I've heard the name a million times. I just don't care. So I think it's just really hard to say about the general election until we know

where the economy is, where Joe Biden is, until we see, for instance, where the documents case goes, where the Georgia case goes. This is really the tip of the iceberg. One thing we know for sure is that there are other cases and there will be other developments in those cases before the election. And so in that way, it's just very hard to imagine we know definitively which little block gets animated enough to tilt an election that historically with Trump has been a slim margin no matter what. So let's go ahead. Let's do some questions here from the premium subscribers. And guys, use the AMA. If you are a premium subscriber, use the AMA function that you all know and love.

If you are not a premium subscriber, you can still become a premium subscriber at BreakingPoints.com, and then you can submit your questions. Okay. Talon Mahoski. What happens if Trump goes to prison and gets elected? That's a great question. Hi, Crystal and Sagar. You've mentioned previously on the podcast that Eugene Debs set the precedent for receiving votes while in prison.

In that instance, the candidate lost. Is there any roadmap or guidelines for what would happen if Trump were to be found guilty in any of the upcoming cases and if he were to win the election? No, there is no roadmap. There also is no guideline. What complicates this even more

is that you can't try a sitting president. Actually, there's a significant amount of legal immunity that you get whenever you become president. So whenever you become the president-elect, he wouldn't be entitled to any of those legal protections. However, whenever you would become the president, then actually that would change everything, especially potentially in terms of new charges. Obviously, it would be totally uncharted territory. I've actually asked for people who know, as far as others know, there is no existing DOJ guidance around any of this. It never got to this point during Nixon, obviously, because he was going to be forced out of office.

And then Ford, with the preemptive pardon for any and all crimes, also removed what it would look like for Secret Service detail and all of that. I believe that's the last time it was ever seriously considered by the United States government. So as you alluded to, Eugene Debs, who was the socialist candidate in that election, I think he actually won a decent amount of the vote. It was like 4% or something like that. It was not an insignificant number of votes, but obviously, I think that was 100 years ago now

at this point, and in terms of the development for pre-existing guidance, what you asked for, Talon, there is no roadmap. There is no guideline. So we'll all find out together. Do you read about Debs in your new book? No. Too early?

Too early, yeah. Yeah, Debs. Interesting guy, though. Yes, it was the espionage act. He was giving anti-World War I speeches. That's right. And they said, well, you're messing with our ability to recruit doughboys to go over and save the world from democracy. Right.

But I guess Trump, he'd be sworn in in his cell. Is that how that would have to work? He'd still be commander in chief. Could he order a SEAL team raid on the jail and bust himself out? Nothing requires that the president actually be sworn in at the Capitol. They only need to get sworn in by a federal judge. Like LBJ is sworn in on course one. LBJ, Harry Truman was sworn in in the White House.

I'm trying to think about some of the other ones who were, some of them actually didn't even take the oath of office until days later, which is kind of crazy from a commander in chief perspective because you're like, are you technically in charge of the government or not? Part of the reason why LBJ wanted to take the oath. Maybe you, if you follow the logic of you can't try a prosecutor, you can't jail a president, you can't sentence, you can't jail one either. You pause his sentence. He serves his term, and then he goes right back.

Right. I do want to note for everybody, it is 8.15. That is technically the start time for the Trump press conference. We're on watch. We are taking a look at that. The moment that he comes out and he's actually up on the stage, we'll bring it to all of you. And don't forget also, we are still going to also try and cover the Wisconsin election. Yeah. Chicago mayor as well. So we're not only going to be talking about Trump today. These are huge. I was refreshing my memories as a president. But do you guys know who Jim Traficant is? He was a mob. Yeah. So he he he actually held this is funny.

He held the seat that Tim Ryan represented in Youngstown. And Ryan was actually an aide for him at one point. And then Traficant was found guilty on 10 felony counts of all kinds of stuff. And then he gets expelled from Congress. So, I mean, that was like sort of he was sort of sentenced to prison and then kicked out of Congress. And then when he gets out, he tried to run again and Ryan runs against him and beats him. But that's sort of the closest that I can think of in modern history to a member of Congress or an elected official being directly like in prison while trying to serve in office. It also could become constitutional because there would be all these questions up to the Supreme Court,

because then also they could make an argument around election certification at the state level as to whether you would even certify a vote for, like the electoral, why would the electoral college then cast a vote for somebody who was actively in president? Yeah, this would be really interesting. You never know. My mind is worried.

So you guys remember Don Blankenship in West Virginia? Yes. A primary campaign. That's right. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Wow, man. Isn't he the... I think he did Cocaine Mitch.

He did Cocaine Mitch. That ad was amazing. Let's take another question. Shout out to him. All right, Evan LaMarca, premium subscriber. Again, you can become one, or if you're a pre-existing one, submit them on the AMA question.

Hello, Breaking Points. If former President Trump wins the 2024 election, do you think he will forgive and forget the actions taken by the legal system? Are we looking at the same Trump here, Evan? Is there a chance that Hunter Biden or President Biden will then face charges because of retribution by Trump? Will this set a dangerous precedent

for future presidents and presidential candidates? Let's put the precedent aside, because I think we've already answered that one. Trump himself, Emily, what do you think? My take is, is that he would ask the DOJ and try to get Jeff Sessions, or whoever the future type of person like that would be, to do so, but that they probably wouldn't do it,

because that's basically exactly what happened all throughout his entire presidency. Yes, but he learned from that. Oh, that's true. And that's where I think it gets really interesting is that, you know, from schedule F to everything else, one of the big elements of this transition phase that the conservative movement is looking at right now, they see this as a potential transition phase to another Trump presidency, to a DeSantis presidency.

They're trying to staff up. They're trying to actually vet people in advance of a potential Republican presidency to staff the administrative state. And some of these really high level appointments, they are if there is one thing that is animating that effort, it's to get the right people that will follow those sort of directives. Now, there were a lot of people in the even in the sort of Trump friendly conservative legal movement after the 2020 election, who said no? Like, this stuff is nonsense. Should they have been more vocal? Perhaps. But there were a lot of people who disagreed on that point. Mike Pence is actually one of them. Mike Pence actually sought out counsel on the legitimacy of that legal argument, which was dead on arrival to a lot of people's ears. But he actually went out and said, is there legitimacy to this? And a lot of

people in that world told him no. But that said, Donald Trump knows damn well that that's what blocked a lot of his agenda. You said Jeff Sessions. Yeah, that's right. Recusing himself from the Russia investigation. It's still rank of Donald Trump. So I think he's really learned a lesson from that. So in another Trump presidency, I think, frankly, there's a question of whether you could possibly find enough people to do that. So I think that's a legitimate question. But I also think that is their top priority. I mean, I am a little skeptical always, Ryan, when I see these articles about like, oh, this time is going to be different. And Trump learned this time it's going to be highly competent from the top down. And they got the plan in place. And it's like, you know,

he did have four years to figure some of this stuff out and he never did. So I'm a little skeptical that it would be this well-oiled machine a second time around with everybody in place to like do his bidding or the bidding of the conservative ecosystem or whatever the goal ultimately is. Yeah. They don't call it the shallow state. It's a deep, deep state for real. It's deep. You're not going to be able to come in with just a couple of dudes who are really charged up. You're like, okay, Boris Epstein. Go do it.

Do it all. How funny was it to see Boris today? Some of these people, it's like they're characters that never die. Jason Miller was there too. Jason Miller. I mean, Jason, look, I'll say this about Jason.

He actually is pretty good at his job relative to almost everybody else. I've dealt with him also in the past. He understands the assignment. Exactly. You know what it is? He understands the assignment. And also, Trump really trusts him, and that's something very rare.

Some of the people around Trump, I will just say that, some of the dumbest people I have ever met. No, no, only the best. Only the best. All the best. Yeah, I mean, that aside, Crystal, I get to your point. I think you're correct, which is fundamentally, I just don't believe it. I'm like, I actually saw this movie before.

There's no reason to believe that literally anything has changed. Everybody's like, oh, but this time they're going to vet the appointees. The president on day one is supposed to appoint some 5,000 people to government. How many people actually are going to check that box of what you just alluded to? Maybe 200? Maybe 300? It's got to go to Baker's dozen. It's like, where are all these people coming from?

Like, you know, you actually need—and also, you know, to work for the federal government. I'm not even saying I support this, but there are all kinds of, like, license— you're like, you know, you have to be a lawyer if you want to be in this job. You have to have had, you know, exposition or a master's degree, I believe, in many of these like non-Senate confirmed appointed positions within the government. And then even if you do appoint them, some of them, as I just said, are Senate confirmed all the way down to the undersecretary level. There's no reason, you know, that Lindsey Graham or any of these, Mitt Romney is going to vote for these people. It's not like the Democrats are gonna help you out.

And what if the Democrats keep control of the Senate? What, Chuck Schumer's gonna let some moron who's 22 years old to be like Undersecretary of the Defense? There's all these structural reasons why I just don't think this is gonna work out. And it gets worse than that. You and I know that one of the biggest hurdles

for people who wanted to be in the Trump administration is that they had this ham-fisted rule they implemented. Oh, about the tweets. Yes, about people's tweets. And they would scroll back years on people's tweets. And a perfectly qualified person who was super MAGA wouldn't get a job because they sent one tweet in favor of Ted

Cruz in 2015. Oh, that's funny. I have personal friends who this happened to. That's funny. By the way, guys, it looks like Secret Service is moving through the room. I'm just keeping an eye on the feed just to make sure's funny. By the way, guys, it looks like Secret Service is moving through the room. I'm just keeping an eye on the feed just to make sure. Yeah. See what's going on. But it looks like there's some activity in the room.

People are getting excited. So just keep that in mind as we're talking. All right. Let's do another. Let's do another premium question here. Real quick before I do that, though, I do want to remind people that we will have election results later, too. Yes. And the Chicago mayor's race and this Wisconsin state Supreme court race,

which is weirdly extremely important, um, because it could flip it's currently a four, three conservative majority could flip the, uh, sort of partisan inclinations of the court, huge stakes in terms of potential presidential election. Wisconsin was the only state Supreme court that even considered Trump's, um, you Trump's insane stop the steal court case nonsense. Huge implications in terms of abortion as it stands. This 1800s complete abortion ban is in effect in Wisconsin. The more liberal candidate has said she would vote with the other liberals to overturn that. So a lot of voters saying that that is number one for them.

Also huge implications in terms of just partisan control of the state. This is a state that has been gerrymandered like crazy in favor of the Republicans. So a liberal balance court would look very skeptically at this. So very high stakes there that we're going to be watching for. But let's go ahead. And is Trump coming out? He's walking out. I was just telling everybody our control room. We see him. Let's go ahead and switch over to the feed here, guys.

This is the former president. Yes. And you can see him walking in here. This is Crystal's cable news skills coming in here. Personally, I cannot do this. I can't just fill this amount of time. I was wishing they would call him

President A. Yeah, yeah, that's right. That would be great. Individual one, Ryan. Individual one. Look at some of the cowboy hats that are there in the audience. The supporters and fans there has kind of more of a rally vibe energy to it than, you know, any sort of like somber legal proceeding or anything like that.

The idea is I guess he's going to give some comments and maybe he's going to take questions from the press. I don't see, just looking at this setup, I don't see how he could possibly take questions. Take questions, right? Because where would the press be? And then, yeah, it looks like he's moving, is this the ballroom, I believe, in Mar-a-Lago?

And he's moving lovingly through the crowd, taking a bunch of photos. Lovingly. I mean, they certainly look like they love him. They definitely love him. I don't know if he loves them, but he loves them enough to sell them a $50 T-shirt with a fake mugshot on it.

With a fake mugshot. Did you guys see that? Can't put a price tag on that. No, you can't. I mean, I may or may not have bought one already from the set. Yeah. But just looking, I guess he's making his way.

I'm just looking at this logistically. Emily, do you agree? I'm not sure how they could possibly set this up as a press conference. Because that's what they're billing it as. This setup looks like his campaign announcement. Emily, do you agree? I'm not sure how they could possibly set this up as a press conference. Because that's what they're billing it as. This setup looks like his campaign announcement. Yeah, this is a rally. It looks like when he announced his campaign.

It does look exactly like his campaign announcement. Hopefully he brings a little bit more fire than he did for his... For his announcement. For the last time that we were all together. Yeah, it was so boring the last time that we all watched this. So before we hear him start, what do you guys think? Is this going to be like a wild Trump off-the-cuff speech? Or is this going to be one of the tame, teleprompter,

like stay-on-the-script Trump speeches? I think he's in it. I think he's most animated when he's back against the wall. So, I mean, I always think about the day, the most animated I ever saw the man was I interviewed him two days after the midterm elections. And it was because it was a disaster, 2018. And he, his only mission in life was to convince me and then the press later in the press conference that it was not his fault that Republicans did badly in the election.

All right, guys. Okay, so he's coming up here. Let's go ahead and take a listen to Trump. We'll see how it goes. All right, gents, let's cut to the wide, and let's see what exactly the man has to say. See you guys on the other side. All right, that was the former president

giving what was much more of like a campaign speech than a direct response to the charges of the day going through all the greatest hits. Going back to the beginning, Russiagate, impeachment, Ukraine, the whole bit. And also, and this was maybe, I wasn't necessarily expecting this, talking not just about the indictments from today, but going through each of the potential charges that could come against him with regards to documents and fake elector scheme. He talked specifically about Fulton County. And by the way, disclaimer for

YouTube, any nonsense that he said about the election is exactly that. So we are not endorsing any of the claims that he made in that video. But what are you guys' top line thoughts? I'm stunned at how short the speech was. It comes in at exactly 21 minutes. It's one of the shortest speeches that Trump has given in a while. I've seen him give speeches at like the Easter dedication to how short the speech was. It comes in at exactly 21 minutes. It's one of the shortest speeches that Trump has given in a lot. I've seen him give speeches at like the Easter dedication for the White House,

which are longer. But number one was not spending more time going through the specifics, not talking about the indictment. Actually, I thought it was a smart move because he basically pulled back. And I thought it was a bit of a tell

spending more of his time, not even on Alvin Bragg. If you look at, and somebody can go do the statistical analysis, dramatically more time talking about the documents, about the Presidential Records Act, and about the Fulton County, Georgia. It might actually be an insight into his thinking as to where he faces genuine legal and political jeopardy, not actually looking at this as all that much of a threat. One of the most important lines Philip Wegman flagging from RealClearPolitics is that he said that prosecutors wanted him to settle the case, but quote, I want no part of that. Now, look, obviously we have no idea whether that is true or not. It's certainly possible, I guess, that it could be true that they were trying to roll him up or get him to a plea deal just so everybody can get a press release. Roll him up on who? He's the president of the United States.

That's a good point. Flip on, I don't know, who would be more powerful than that. The UN? Tell us what really happened to the UFOs. Who's the Davos guy? What's his name? Oh, Bill...

Klaus Schwab. Yeah. I'll tell you this. If we can roll Trump up... And it's funny because you were just talking about eating bugs, Sagar. That's true. I was just talking about,

I have eaten bugs, just so people know. They weren't that bad. I ate them in Thailand. They were fried nicely with some nice spices eaten bugs, just so people know. They weren't that bad. I ate them in Thailand. They were fried nicely with some nice spices. Not sending me to the pod. What did you guys think?

Yeah, what did you guys think? What was your reaction? Yeah, it was like a good Billy Joel concert. He's playing all the hits. And he was feeling it. Like it wasn't the Trump that just kind of stumbled out there

right after the election. I think he very much regretted taking the advice of his advisors who A, said he should announce at that point and B, said that he should stick to the script and try to be this politician who's like plays within the rules. And he did that and he's like,

now look what they did. They're trying to throw me in jail. So he's just gonna say, well, screw it. What's the point? And it will set him up. It gives him a reason to run his campaign because now he can just say he's, you know, fighting off all of these different forces that are coming at him, which then means that he doesn't actually have to say what he's going to do if he's elected. I almost have this thought. I'm curious what you guys think.

This, to me, is like almost the real campaign launch of 2024. His original campaign was such a snooze fest. We covered it all here live. You know, we made a whole big to-do out of it. We watched it like it. His original campaign, it was such a snooze fest. We covered it all here live. You know, we made a whole big to-do out of it. And we watched it and we're like, that's it? Like, it's so disappointing.

This, it felt genuine with him just watching him, you know, meandering all over the place. Chinatown is my personal favorite. We're all trying to figure out, we're like, what is he talking about here? That is a part of a vintage Trump. His energy seemed there.

He seemed more in a fighting posture. Crystal, what did you think overall? Yeah, I mean, it a part of a vintage Trump. His energy seemed there. He seemed more in a fighting posture. Crystal, what did you think overall? Yeah, I mean, it was kind of an in-between vibe because certainly higher energy than the campaign launch, which was almost like very somber affair. But he was more or less on script, right? I mean, short speech. He more or less stuck to the teleprompter with a few little ad libs here or there. So it was like, in terms of the Trump vibe, it was kind of in between. He clearly had a lot more energy than he did at the campaign launch. And a couple things stand out to me. Number one, to your point, Sagar, I'm not sure it is smart strategically for him to focus

on all the range of charges because these particular charges are the weakest of all of them and the ones that he has the most to work with. So I'm actually a little surprised from a tactical perspective that he didn't just like laser in on these and hammer at home and get all the talking points going. And then the move is, which he has done before, everything else, even though the other things may have more merit and may be more difficult to dismiss, you just lump them in the same category and say, see, it was a witch hunt with Alvin Bragg and these are all witch hunts too. Without having to get into all the specifics of like the Farrah, the document, like group and whatever, the acronyms that he's using that I don't even know, obviously, off the top of my head. So I was surprised by that tactically. I do think it's a tell that he, like you, kept pointing to Emily saying this is the tip of the iceberg. He clearly sees it that way as well. He sees this as the first of probably a number of charges he's going to have to deal with. And so he is already trying to make his case about all of those charges right now from the beginning. So I think that is

noteworthy. And then in the politics of it, and Emily, I'd love to get your thought about this. Again, this just makes it impossible for any other Republican contender because this is like the campaign launch. And guess what? It's not about policy or, you know, what you're going to do for your state or for the country or whatever. It's about the litany of the attacks on him that he sees as unfair and all the people that are out to get him. How do you compete with that when that is the landscape that he is crafting and that is going to be the landscape that the media is playing on too going into the primary elections? You absolutely don't. And I actually wonder if that's factoring into Ron DeSantis' decision to test the waters in a way. He's not in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina,

like Tim Scott, like Mike Pompeo, like other people that are declared. Of course, he is an acting governor. But at the same time, he really is weighted, I think, with more hesitance or reluctance into those waters than anyone else. Because if the election is about Donald Trump, the only person who's going to win a Republican primary is Donald Trump. If one of the top issues every single day is that, for Republicans, the government is being weaponized to pursue a political enemy and that political enemy is Donald Trump. Even if it's a proxy, a symbol, Trump always says, it's not about me, it's about you, I'm

only in the way. If that's it, he's still the one in the way. So it doesn't make any sense that you could see somebody eating at the media attention. I understand all the arguments that there are different lanes for different Republican candidates going forward, I get it. But if this becomes the headline news over and over again, now that we have super hungry district attorney down in Atlanta, we have a special counsel probe on the documents. That's to Ryan's point he made earlier, that was huge in the midterm elections was forcing

the conversation about Trump with the documents. Democrats were very successful in making every candidate who was running everywhere talk constantly about Donald Trump, answer for Donald Trump. It made the MAGA candidates talk, it was like bait for them, talk more and more and more about Donald Trump. He has raised $10 million since the indictment. That is a big- That's a lot of money. $10 million since the indictment. So not only in the sort of media ecosystem will he eat up all of the different time and conversation, he could also do that with donors. It's also entirely possible that because he's the high profile subject of this, he gets all do that with donors. It's also entirely possible that because he's the

high profile subject of this, he gets all of the funding money. I kept thinking about that too. You know, earlier when I was watching, Joe Biden is the president and he is the most irrelevant man today. In the middle of his own tenure, the press, the White House, CNN is chartering a speedboat to watch this man's plane land. The helicopter shots, the drones. There were hundreds of press assembled outside of Manhattan. And the president of the United States is sitting in the White House. And they, quote, call the lid like no public events scheduled at 3 o'clock p.m.

Because they're like, no, it's like they're not even involved in any of this. I just kept thinking about this. The Trump era began the day that he walked down the escalator. It will end the day that he dies. Even when he's not a candidate, he is literally the center of gravity of politics. He was like that even the first two years before he decided he was going to run again against Biden. And when you're the center of gravity, how do you run against that? He's a bigger, he's almost a larger than life figure.

He's not even political. He's metacultural now at this point. Ron DeSantis, what is your case to Republican voters? Like, you know, I saw Richard Hanania say this. He's like, listen, DeSantis won't win because there are not people on YouTube who consider themselves like actual QAnon preachers for Trump who think they're going to deliver.

Like no one is like out there having shrines of DeSantis. Like he's going to deliver me from a wayfarer pedophiles. What you're saying is that there's an opening in the market. Look, I get it. You're right. That's what counterpoint should start doing.

I don't know. You know who it benefits? You know who it benefits the most to be out, to have Joe Biden out of the news? What do you think? Joe Biden. Of course.

That's the craziness of it all, right? That's the craziness. And that's what I was thinking about is, listen, whether they're right or not, and I think they're very foolish and they are forgetting history to be like, we want Donald Trump to be the nominee. That is what Democrats think. They want Donald Trump to be the nominee. They are more fearful of Ron DeSantis as a contender. The best thing for Joe Biden that could possibly happen is for Trump and the Trump circus to be dominating in the news and Biden to just be laying back and not saying anything. So you have really like a full service economy here. The corporate media on the liberal side is going to be interested in leaning into this. And I mean, in a sense, like we're doing that.

I can't blame them because it is historic to have a former president who is being indicted on this charge and probably a range of other charges as well. They're going to be leaning into it and making Trump the center of their ire. Conservative media is going to, whether they want to or not, they're going to have to do the same thing on the other side and focus a lot on these and rebutting these charges. And that's going to be the center of gravity there. All of the oxygen in the political ecosystem is going to be taken up once again by Donald Trump. By the way, Brandon Johnson just went up. Wow. Very interesting. Most left-wing mayor since Harold Washington. That's crazy.

So just to everybody who's watching the stream and who is listening tomorrow when all this is going down, we are actively monitoring the Chicago mayoral results and the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Why don't you give us, Ryan, a little bit of an update on, give us a lay of the land in the Chicago race for people who haven't been following this and are like, I don't live in Chicago, why should I care?

Yeah, it's a microcosm of our tough on crime and defund the police debate that we've been having since 2020, basically, with Democrats being told that, you know, everybody, you know, that that anybody who ever wore a defund the police T-shirt has to be driven out of politics forever. Speaking of Wisconsin. Speaking of Wisconsin. Yeah, exactly. has to be driven out of politics forever. Speaking of Wisconsin. Speaking of Wisconsin. Yeah, good point. Yeah, exactly. And Mandela Barnes almost won that race that Democrats gave up on him on. So Brandon Johnson, middle school teacher,

kind of lefty organizer for the teachers unions, had the support of, it's called United Working Families, which is an affiliate of Working Families Party, which has been organizing in Chicago for several cycles now and kind of taking what was a little rump resistance to Rahm Emanuel and growing it into a real kind of democratic socialist base on the city council. And this was their first candidate that they're running at the mayoral level in November, or most first serious one in November, he was at like 3%. And he propelled himself into the runoff, into the top two against Paul Vallis. He was outspent two to one. Wow.

And so there was a lot of pessimism going in that the money and the organizing from the police union would be enough to swamp him. But it looks like right now he's up by 1,100 votes and they expect that he'll win the mail-in ballots by at least 10,000. And there's like almost 90% in. So what would the margin of that look like? Like a couple of points? So right now he's up a point, but he would end up winning by maybe three or four points if the projections hold. Wasserman was saying that Vallis needs a miracle at this point. And it does seem to be a very clear ideological divide between the two of them.

And Vallis actually came in first in the initial runoff that knocked Lori Lightfoot, who was the incumbent mayor, out. So, you know, it looked like he had a strong hand to play here going in as well. But yeah, he's backed by a lot of the more sort of like conservative apparatus in the city and certainly backed by the police union as well. Brandon Johnson was accusing him of being like sort of like a closet Trump supporter kind of thing. It was a very like clear ideological divide

between these two candidates. And the Sanders wing's big problem has always been working class black voters. And so this is that kind of the first time that this coalition, since like Harold Washington in the 80s in Chicago, really pulled together working class black voters and a progressive movement that is coded sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly as kind of white dominated.

And that force coming together is what is needed if you're gonna become take, if you're going to become dominant in Democratic primaries. And that had eluded the left in a lot of these races. And you saw South Carolina break the back of the Sanders campaign in 2020, for instance. So if they do pull this together, it's a model. And whether it can be repeated, we'll see. I was going to say, I think you can sort of make a Trump connection here, as much as it may seem and that do it when Lori Lightfoot was toppled it was this Republicans sort of see in this a win for the tough on crime Republican line the the

You know centrist Democrat the valence, you know This is the voice the voices of reason and centrism are winning out because crime has escalated in ways that your average Chicagoan feels threatened by. And I think they're probably making a, well, I know they're making a similar argument in Wisconsin, which is another race we're paying really close attention to. But abortion is playing into that race as well. It's not playing in Chicago, but it is playing in Wisconsin in the way that it played out in some midterm competitions. And I just think it's really important for people on the right who look around the country and see what does look like just urban decay. I mean, we're here

in Washington, D.C. It's a city that has plenty of problems, and that's been sort of front page news for a couple of weeks in the way that Congress has handled it. But Republicans think that means people are going to gravitate in one direction. Yes. That people are going to reject socialism. They're going to reject radical leftism. Donald Trump was talking about hardcore Democrats and loony leftists, loony liberals, whatever, because the Democratic Party has real problems and Democratic socialists have real problems in terms of governance in certain places. That is not automatic. It's not going to be a reflex. There's nothing given that these cities are just going to swing right because of all of that. And I think Chicago could be a really big indication tonight. I'm thinking of multiple things. So

on the one hand, I was just looking at a population map the other day here. I can go ahead and pull it up. And basically what it showed is that you had California and the state of New York lose a lot of population. That's what got the headlines. But the bigger story was that every major urban city across the country, save for cities in Texas, Arizona, and even in Florida, many people were leaving Miami-Dade County for, you know, Tampa or other places which had more affordable housing. So at a certain point, you might think, well, okay, well, the people who are staying in the cities clearly are not leaving. You know, by definition, anybody who is on the cusp of hates it so much that they might vote differently is just going to leave. A lot of people aren't just going to stay. So if anything, it could lead to a situation where people who are committed to the project, to the city life, and who want that and align, or at least aren't as perturbed as many others, are obviously willing to vote within those policies. And then people

who don't like it are just going to leave. So you might even have, what, even more geographic polarization, if that's even possible. Significant net migrations happen between urban and not even rural areas, but really more suburban and ex-urban. That probably is only going to continue now as a result of that. But coincidentally, I actually think it probably makes it easier for leftists to win in major cities if that's going to be the case. Does all that make sense? Yeah, it does. I mean, you also have to count there are a lot of people who can't leave, right? No, look, I'm not saying you should leave. I'm saying people who can leave, I'm saying that people who can leave, a lot of them are leaving.

Yeah, and certainly in the parts of Chicago that have been just beset by a scourge of gun violence, you have had massive population loss. Yes, huge. But you also have a lot of people who can't afford to leave and have no choice but to stay and to try to figure out the best way forward.

One of the things, Ryan, that I'll be watching for is the media's takeaway on if Brandon Johnson does prevail. Because any time an Eric Adams wins, it's seen as a referendum on this is the moderate's time and the tough-on-crime era is here and whatever. And whenever a leftist wins, it's like, yeah, it's the moderate's time and the tough on crime era is here and whatever. And whenever a leftist wins, it's like, yeah, it's a fluke. Doesn't mean anything. Right. Instead of being like, oh, maybe these neighborhoods in Chicago that are actually experiencing extreme levels of violence want something other than just incarceration

as a response to that. Like the media could explore that as a possibility if Johnson wins. Yeah, they're definitely not gonna take it as like, oh, there's a national backlash against Joe Biden moderate centrism. There's no way. Whereas when Eric Adams wins, it's like, oh, this means everything for the country. Where, you know, I think probably

the intelligent thing to do is to look at the specifics of the races, the specifics of the candidates, the specifics of the coalitions that you were talking about that have been built up over a long period of time and view it through like a unique regional lens rather than trying to paint some broad national picture based on one mayoral race result would be my suggestion. I also really think that Republicans see their hope right now as this backlash in general. And I think that's why Trump framed his speech the way he did. To some extent, that's his only option.

But there's this idea that the overreach and what feels like abnormality and unprecedented decisions, that's what can tap into your voter that you need to animate, get out and actually vote Republican and independent who may go back and forth, make them feel like the ground is shaking under their feet, make them feel uncomfortable. And I just don't think that translates into wins for centrists and for Republicans as easily as people think it does. I think that's what Trump is obviously to the point that was raised here about how Donald Trump is trying to tie this into the broader legal fights that he's facing. I think that's very deliberate. It's very deliberate because he's tapping into what voters feel is being like maybe unsettled or new,

abnormal in all of those different ways, including with crime, but it doesn't automatically translate. There's no guarantee. We've got one of our guests standing by, but why don't you guys keep an eye on these results too, and we'll get everybody updated. Yeah, because Wisconsin polls have closed as well, so we should be getting some results out of there. Yes, we will absolutely get them. So I believe we have our guest standing by, control room, if we can go and have him. There he is. There he is. There he is, national security lawyer Bradley Moss.

Welcome back to the show, Brad. It's good to see you. Good to see you. How are you guys doing? Doing good. How about you? Doing well. Can't complain.

It's been an interesting day. Yes, I know. This is your Super Bowl, Brad. No, the classified documents case, that'll be my Super Bowl. That's true. That's true. That was your Super Bowl.

Although, you know, we got a significant amount of that discussion in the speech as well. Brad, so the last time that you were on our show, one of the things that we wanted to discuss was about the potential indictment. All of that was based on leaks. We were specifically focusing on the novel theory of the case. As you said, well, that's why novel things are novel. They will get tried in court. Now that you've had the chance to both read the indictment and to read the statement of facts, what's your major takeaway from this case?

And I know that you've always found it defense or you found it defensible originally. Do you still stand by that? What do you think? What do you think about it? Sure. I think it's still defensible. I do view this as a very bold and risky move by Alvin Bragg. This is a very clear misdemeanor case.

If that's all he was bringing, I would have no concerns. I think Trump would be toast. The elevation of this to a felony is based on two basic issues. One is that campaign finance issue, which obviously is that novel theory. The idea that tying it in without actually charging a state election crime, because they can't because it'd be preempted by federal law, but referencing that for basis of elevating it to a felony, that's going to be a subject of pretrial motions. We don't know how that'll go. That'll be a fascinating legal nerd moment. The rest of us, everybody else will just be waiting to see what happens. But the backup Alvin Bragg has got here is he's referencing state tax crimes as well. That could be interesting. That could salvage things if for

any reason the election crime provisions go down and reduces this to a misdemeanor. But remember, a misdemeanor is still a crime. There's still a crime here either way. Can you explain that tax piece? Because I, frankly, as a non-lawyer, am a little confused because in the statement of facts, clearly he references that this was used in part to engage in tax fraud. There are some details that are given in the statement of facts with regard to that. I read through it earlier in terms of how the payments were structured so that Michael Cohen could recognize it in a certain way on his tax statements. But it didn't seem that that was the piece that he was using to elevate this to a felony charge.

So does he have to lay that out now? Or can they then in the trial make that case? How does this all work out? Sure. So the next step that the Trump team is going to take, and they're going to take this anyways for a number of reasons, is they're going to ask for a bill of particulars. They're going to ask for more detail beyond the basics that were in this indictment. And there was limits to what Alvin Bragg was legally required to do right now and what they could basically wait for the Trump team to make them do more. So the Trump team will file for a bill of particulars. They'll try to nail down Alvin Bragg on what the specific state laws are at issue that he's going to be relying upon to elevate it to

a felony and how that relates to the statement of facts or offense, whatever they want to call it in this case at this moment. I don't think that Alvin Bragg is going to have to provide as much detail as the Trump team would like. A lot of this will ultimately come down to if this gets to trial, that's where he'll have to lay it all out. But a. A lot of this will ultimately come down to if this gets to the trial, that's where he'll have to lay it all out. But a lot of it's also gonna come down to discovery. Alvin Bragg's got 65 days to basically turn over everything he's got

to the Trump team so they can start deciding whether or not they're gonna go with pretrial motions to try to dismiss as a matter of law or try to get it reduced down to a misdemeanor, any number of issues. That's where a lot of the details, a lot of the information will be outlined. That's what the Trump team is waiting to see.

Got it. So Brad, we had some of our premium subs. They submitted some questions that we thought were best for a lawyer. One of them is, what would happen today if Trump had pled guilty? He actually intimated during his speech that prosecutors had wanted to strike a deal.

A, what did you make of that? Do you think that was just Trump being Trump? Do you think that was legitimate? And B, actually, that is a good question. A, what did you make of that? Do you think that was just Trump being Trump? Do you think that was legitimate? And B, actually, that is a good question. Like, what does happen? Or what would a plea agreement even look like? Would he plea to a misdemeanor? Like, would that, some settlement type of thing?

What do you think? Yeah, I have no doubt that the DA's office probably did offer something to Trump's team, some form of misdemeanor that Trump would have to allocute to a certain number of charges. Would be, you know, probation, if anything. If this is a misdemeanor in the end, even if it's a felony, jail time isn't really guaranteed, let alone likely for Donald Trump, given the circumstances, given his lack of a criminal history, at least so far. So if he had pled guilty today, he would have still been released, probably on bond, if anything.

There would be a pre-sentencing report. There would be any number of details that both sides would get to submit briefs outlining what punishment they believe would be required under the New York state guidelines. And that would ultimately go to the judge at a sentencing hearing. But he wouldn't have been going to jail today. It's not that kind of case. Got it. Bradley, can you talk about the New York state election law reference that Alvin Bragg made? Can he actually, can he do that? It's not entirely clear whether he's relying on New York state election law or the federal election law. Either way, here's, and this is

where there's going to be these pretrial motions, which are going to get kind of interesting for legal nerds. I don't know about for anybody else. There's going to be a pretrial motion by the Trump team claiming that whatever election law Alvin Bragg is relying upon, that it's been preempted, that he can't rely on state election law, for example, because the federal election laws preempt any state election laws that would apply to a federal candidate. Congress didn't want federal candidates for Senate, Congress, or for the presidency to have to worry about 50 state laws and the federal election law. So that would get preempted. So that's going to be interesting to see exactly what Alvin Bragg is relying upon here. And if he's going for the federal one, there's going to be the obvious problem of, well, you haven't charged it and that's not within your

jurisdiction. How can you elevate the charge based on a federal crime, which is the purview of DOJ. That's where, over the next two to three months, as more details come out, as the bill of particulars gets filed, I think we'll get a better sense of the nature of his case. These are things that Alvin Bradstine, no doubt, has already game-planned out. They've got legal demos prepared of how they would respond. Their briefs are probably pre-written, for the most part. They know what they're going to argue. They just don't know what the judge will decide. Bradley, in your view, are there any risks to precedent here? My old boss, Tim Carney, wrote in the Washington Examiner earlier that it's ridiculous to suggest every expense that helps a campaign is then classified as a campaign expense,

although there's obviously other things going on here. That said, there is a kind of big question looming over it. Does this, you know, Republicans are saying this is ushered in the banana republic era in American politics. Earlier you said there is a question going from misdemeanor to felony, sort of converting that. Jonathan Chait wrote skeptically about that as well. Do you think there are any risks to setting bad precedents here, or do you see this as a more narrow case? I view it as a narrow case, and here's why I'll say that. There is a clear misdemeanor case here, because he used personal funds. This isn't like what Hillary Clinton did where her campaign reimbursed the law firm that had paid for the subcontractor to do the steal.ca thing. That was campaign funds. There'd be nobody to indict.

It's a campaign. It's shut down. Whatever corporate entity is all that's left of it. This was Donald Trump from the Donald Trump Trust cutting checks to Michael Cohen to reimburse him on the HELOC that he took out to pay off Stormy Daniels. And it was the documentation outlining the payment to Michael Cohen

was done through business records. That's how he got caught up in this particular criminal provision. So that's very distinctive and very Trump-esque-like that is distinguishable from what, say, a Hillary Clinton would do or a Barack Obama in his campaign would do. There's no Obama organization to have run that through and a trust to have run that through to pay off on a hush money deal the way that Donald Trump did. That's what I think makes this a very narrow case in that regard. I don't see that if this fails or if this goes forward either way, I don't see him having ramifications for much of anybody else. Got it.

So if the Trump campaign had paid Stormy Daniels with campaign money, would he be in the clear here? He personally might have. It depends on how it was documented by the campaign and what they wrote down in FEC disclosures. But that's an issue of federal campaign laws, and that would be a problem for the lawyers and for the officials in the campaign who handled that. The extent to which Donald Trump personally would have been criminally liable would have been a far hazier issue. But they didn't want the campaign handling it because they knew they would have to disclose all that to the FEC. He didn't want this disclosed to anybody.

He was concealing it. And that's what this whole indictment and the statement of offense outlines. This was a two-year conspiracy to kill these stories, true or not, and I don't know, neither do you, whether or not these stories with Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels were true, and then to cover up the concealment of them through these shady reimburses. I mean, I think we have a pretty good sense of whether or not they're true. Go ahead.

We have another question from... Oh, no. Okay, all right. That's not what's on trial. Yeah, that's right. We have another question from one of our premium subscribers, Brian McAfee, asked about the statute of limitation. He says, can anyone break down the statute of limitations in this case? Because this was another piece where there was they had to kind of do some legal maneuvering to make it so that they still had time to charge this case? Yeah, so the problem for Donald Trump here is he left the state of New York. He left first in 2017 to become the president and to live in D.C. And then after 2020, when he lost the election, he moved to Florida. He left the state. And under New York

state law, the moment he left to permanently reside somewhere else, the statute of limitations was told. It continued on. And so it was it put on hold that statute of limitations. That's why it hasn't lapped in this case. That's why it continued forward. And that's why that issue, if he brings it up in tree trial motion, but I'm sure he will. That's why that will fail. And finally, this is, as the president himself discussed or former president himself discussed in his speech tonight, this is one case of potentially a number where Trump could face charges. You've got the documents issue. You've got the Fulton County grand jury and fake elector scheme. You've got the special counsel looking into a variety of misdeeds here in Washington. What do you think is the sort of most serious charges that he could

face? Which case do you think is the most potentially solid here moving forward? The case that I have been waiting for since August, the documents case. Now, is this just your personal bias speaking, Bradley? Totally not my personal bias. No, that is the one that I think is the most clear cut and simplest one. And here's why. The January 6th one is going to get tied up in all kinds of issues of the office of the president trying to interact with state officials and officials within DOJ trying to push what is what he would argue is a lawful government operation. It would run into issues of what happened on January 6th in terms of his commentary with First Amendment

proms. There's a number of issues that would get tied up with that one. The Georgia case, again, it's all tied up in a couple of phone calls. I don't know the full universe of what Fannie Willis has got. I'm sure it's going to be very interesting when we see it all. But that has some convoluted aspects where it's a lot more of an issue for the fake electors and Rudy Giuliani for what he said before the legislature than I think it is for Donald Trump. I think he's still getting some dice. I think it's a shadier case. The documents are clear. They went to Mar-a-Lago. They were still classified. They still had the markings. And as far as we can tell now, from what we're getting from even that

sealed ruling that got leaked out regarding Evan Corcoran, he was ordering his lawyers to help him conceal where the documents were to avoid the subpoena. That's ballgame as far as I'm concerned. Right. Yeah. I mean, that fits with almost every legal analysis that I've seen yet involving all three cases. So, Brad, we always appreciate talking to you. We appreciate your view. Thank you for joining us and for staying late. We appreciate it very much. Yeah.

Not a problem. Have a good one. Absolutely. Okay. So, I mean, look, it seems to be basically crystal clear at this point, pun intended, I guess. Every major legal analyst that we've seen, right and left, as Brad, Brad has always been somebody who wants to prosecute Trump.

He's been a big defender of any of these cases. All of them are like, yeah, this one, it's a little weak. Or at the very least, he's saying, open and shut on misdemeanor. He's like, we'll see how it goes. What he was saying about Fulton County is something I've heard before, but all of them always come back to, but the documents one is a real problem.

Everyone right and left, Trump only himself, you know, he obviously addressed that during his rally talking about NARA, the National Records Act and the Presidential Records Act and his own personal authority. It really does, the problem also for him is it doesn't even come down to his possession of the documents themselves, which would not have been a crime. It all comes down to the obstruction charge that is the one that separates him from all of these other public officials. That said, who knows? I mean, politically, it still would be damaging for Biden or for the DOJ to go after when the sitting president himself has also had classified documents. What did you guys take away from Brad's analysis? Yeah, on his misdemeanor point,

misdemeanor is also tough for the prosecutors because there's this two year statute of limitations. Whereas the felony allows you to go to five years and then lets you pull in the misdemeanors as a result. So they're relying then completely on this tolling. They need the felony for that statute of limitations. They'll say, well, he moved to Florida, so we actually doesn't count. And so we can extend it as long as we want, but you can litigate that,

and they could lose that. That actually answers the premium subscriber question we got from Brian McAfee on, can anyone break down the statute of limitations in this case? The two to five year, that's why the felony is absolutely key, and that's where Trump pointed out in his speech, you know, everyone, quote, including rhinos and hardcore Democrats see this case as a weak one. And, yeah, it's true. I mean, basically, you don't see any full throated defenses of this particular case being just a knockout. Like you're just knocking this one out of the ballpark. And I think that's important because as we talked about earlier, I do think Trump benefits in that murkiness, that when that he's able to pitch this as black and white. And that's why he latched onto that to the extent that he did in his speech, I think. But yeah, I mean, that

documents case, that's the big one. Well, and I could be wrong, but I think that's the case that Trump talked the most about in his speech tonight as well. I mean, he certainly went into some detail about why he felt he had the authority and what a bunch of nonsense it was. And actually, Joe Biden did the same thing, only worse than they're in Chinatown or whatever. Chinatown. It seems to me like he also may feel that that's the case where he is in the greatest jeopardy because it also seems that they kind of get the goods on this one. I mean, they subpoenaed all the surveillance footage. There seems to be somebody on the inside who is very close to Trump, perhaps in his secret

service detail, even who has been informing on him or one of his lawyers. It just recently was reported, I believe, by the Washington Post that they had additional evidence that seemed to indicate even after he had certified, oh, yes, of course, we gave him up, that he personally was like sifting through these files and moving documents around. So could be that that one on the obstruction piece is the most clear cut, legally speaking. But Ryan, I do wonder about, you know, the politics on the legal case, maybe one thing, the politics of it did become a lot less clear when it was revealed that Joe Biden also had classified documents. Oh, and Mike Pence

had classified documents. And then everyone goes, okay, I guess everybody had classified documents. So what the hell is going on here? Yeah, there's a sense among some people that there's never a price to pay for fighting. No matter what the odds, you should always take your fight to your opposition. And this idea that there's capital that you can gain and lose is not really based in reality. But I think they're wrong. And I think if they spend capital on this Manhattan case and it gets dismissed, let's say, or it just fizzles, then I think it does draw some energy away from stronger cases that they have, like the one you're talking about. So not only

would they be prosecuting a documents case, which is tricky because the current sitting president has his own document issues, nowhere near as bad as Trump's. Like you said, he was just flagrantly committing crimes the entire time. But if you have that confusion coupled with a failed prosecution in Manhattan and whatever happens in Fulton, it allows him to build a narrative that there's a witch hunt. One thing that I did wonder, though, as well is, I know, obviously, you know, they'll all claim, oh, we're not considering the politics of it whatsoever. We're just evenly applying the facts in the law. And of course, that's total nonsense. And, you know, the DOJ folks are these sort of like nervous Nelly, like naturally personally conservative types, where I think they were

probably deeply worried about what it might do to the country to charge Trump. And are you going to have violent clashes? And are you going to have riots in the street? Like what, how is this all going to unfold? And, you know, we, we saw some, a little bit of protesters getting in each other's faces today, but it certainly wasn't like another January 6th. Right. So I wonder, on the other hand, if you don't have them feel like they have a little bit of cover now and feel a little bit less nervous about bringing whatever cases and whatever charges they have and, you know, seeing what sticks. Because they'll be less fearful of like, oh, this is just literally going to rip the country in two. Very, very possible.

So we've got our other guests standing by, Josh Hammer. He's the opinion editor over at Newsweek. There he is. He's joining us now. Josh, I know that you watched the speech, and you've also, you know, for the audience, he's also got a legal background, so can speak to a lot of that as well.

It's like what we'd like to focus on here. Josh, at this point, I'm assuming you've read the indictment, the statement of facts, and all that. What do you make of the case on its face against Trump? Well, great to be with you guys. I mean, legally speaking, the indictment today, the statement of facts, when I actually read it, even weaker than I expected it to be. And I had pretty shockingly low expectations for how weak it would be. I mean, we do not know, literally, we do not know at this point what the

alleged enhancement crime is that will purportedly take this from misdemeanor to felony. We literally don't know. I mean, you know, the scuttlebutt for the past few days has been that Alvin Bragg was going to try to invoke federal U.S. campaign finance law. Maybe that's the case. I mean, in Alvin Bragg's post-indictment press conference, he also alluded kind of confusingly to New York state law. So the whole thing is totally mud Jean. Grace says, are there other New York crimes that depend on breaking other laws? You discuss how the felony upgrade of Trump's charges depend on proving the crimes were committed in the furtherance or covering up of other crimes. But in this case, may have been federal, though you're saying, Josh, that it's not actually clear, not state laws that were broken. Is there any precedent in statute or common law for other

state laws being broken that depend on other crimes that may be based in federal law? I mean, nothing that I can remember from my first year of criminal law course at the University of Chicago Law School puts you that way. I mean, I mean, you know, if I were to go into like LexisNexis or Westlaw and like literally type in certain search terms, maybe I could pull up some rogue prosecutor, some rogue judge out in kind of the middle of the country who did something crazy 20 or 30 years ago. But, I mean, to say that this is not normal, I think, would be understating it. I mean, Alvin Bragg is a county district attorney.

He is a partisan county district attorney who, if he is actually trying to reach for federal campaign finance laws, I mean, again, holding aside the glaring and obvious statute of limitations issue here, he just quite simply has no jurisdiction to do so. And in fact, U.S. prosecutors have looked into possibly trying to prosecute Trump for alleged violation of those federal campaign finance laws, and they have passed on the case. So I mean, maybe there's some precedent to deepen the weeds of legal research nerdery, but this is not a common thing. Josh, on that question, this is just basic process stuff. What can people expect to happen next for Donald Trump? There's a lot of speculation. Anything can happen. There's already been speculation about what a possible sentence would look like, et cetera, et cetera. What do you think people should be looking out for in the days and weeks ahead? So one thing that I thought was interesting

about the speech in Mar-a-Lago tonight, it was a very tight, controlled speech. I mean, to be totally blunt, I actually thought it was somewhat boring. And I think that was probably, I thought that was probably intentional, right? I'm sure his lawyers were saying be boring. I guess on the one hand, that's okay. On the other hand, I thought politically it was somewhat of a missed opportunity. But clearly, and the reason I raised that, Emily, is because clearly his lawyers are already in his ear. So it'll be interesting just as a matter of kind of the truth social, social media stuff to see like whether the tone actually comes down a little bit. As far as the courtroom stuff, I mean, you're probably going to see a lot of cross motions filed, a lot of kind of lower profile stuff.

Trump's team quite possibly will make a motion to kind of move venue from Manhattan, at least to get this thing to Staten Island, which is the only New York City borough that is even remotely politically heterodox, where he might get anything remotely approximating a fair jury. So I expect some kind of motions on both sides to kind of take up a lot of the court's time. But as far as possibly getting to a jury, if that really is where this ultimately heads, that would be many, many months down the line, probably late summer or early fall, I think. I want to ask you, Josh, the question that I asked our last guest, which is of all the various legal jeopardy, not just these particular charges, but, you know, Fulton County and the document situation and January 6th

and fake electors. Which do you think is the most difficult case for Trump? And which do you think that he faces the greatest legal jeopardy? Well, to be honest with you, I don't think any of these cases are particularly serious on the pure legal merits. I really don't. I mean, the January 6th indictment, which I assume is going to happen at this point, I mean, there's been a lot of buildup. You know, the January 6th Kangaroo Court kind of issued its recommendation. Merrick Garland, from my perspective, has been kind of sticking the prosecutorial apparatuses on conservatives for a while now. So I expect him to kind of go forward with something January 6th related. But there's very direct First Amendment case law that really protects what Trump said at the ellipsis that day.

So I don't view that as particularly legally serious. The classified document stuff to me is clearly statutorily protected under relevant statute. And it's also constitutionally protected under the basic commander in chief article two prerogative because he was the sitting president of the United States. And also the fact that Joe Biden has his own classified document retention issues, I think, mitigates the possible effectiveness of that charge on Trump. So that kind of leaves us with Georgia. That kind of leaves us with the whole infamous Brad Raffensperger phone call as possibly the least legally dubious. And I'm phrasing myself carefully here. I'm not saying it's legally serious. It's the least legally dubious. It's an interesting perspective.

I haven't heard that one yet. Here's an interesting one from one of our premium subs, which you might be able to answer, from Brian McAfee. He says, who is the victim here? I have to remember from my law school days that who is the victim and did Trump have mens rea? I'm assuming I said that correctly. I'm fairly sure I was taught a mens rea was required for a criminal charge unless it has a strict liability crime. I am struggling to find Trump's guilty mind here to prosecute. First of all, explain what the hell he's talking about.

Second of all, answer the question. All right, sure. So yeah, so criminal law 101, there are two components for a crime. There is the actus reus, which is the Latin term for the literal kind of actual act, the actual conduct. And then this questionnaire is correct. You also need the relevant mens rea, which is kind of the subjective mindset. So I am not barred in New York, I'm barred in Texas. So I can't necessarily speak with any kind of great expertise for the relevant underlying New York statutory law. But I would imagine that the actual misdemeanor here, the falsification of business records, probably has a strict liability attached to it, which to kind of break down the legalese

means that you don't actually necessarily have to have a certain kind of subjective mindset that if you do it, you do it. But the mens rea is crucial here because when we get into the possible federal campaign finance law stuff, that makes all the difference in the world. So Alvin Bragg's theory of the case, if it actually does involve federal campaign finance law, is that Donald Trump purposely and deliberately falsified his business records in order for the subjective intent to strictly benefit his 2016 presidential campaign.

The obvious problem for Alvin Bragg's theory of the case is that his purported star witness, the convicted lawyer Michael Cohen, has literally testified that Donald Trump directed him to make the payment to save Trump's family from embarrassment, you know, i.e. it was not necessarily to benefit the 2016 campaign. So if you take Michael Cohen's own word, then the mens rea fails, at least on the federal campaign finance grounds. Got it. Well, Josh, this has actually been very, very helpful. So we appreciate you joining us tonight on breaking some of this down, answering some of those questions. So appreciate it, man. Thank you. Thanks, Josh.

Anytime, guys. So we have a huge call here from Dave Wasserman. How did we decide to say her name? Well, I don't think we did. Pertasiewicz. Okay. Janice Pertasiewicz has- Okay, Janice Protasowitz has defeated Daniel Kelly for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Wow. The result, flipping the ideological control of the court

from conservative to liberal, a huge victory for the pro-choice side. So that's the call there from Dave Wasserman. Obviously, we'll wait for the AP, but that's usually as good as it gets for the early one. And it's early. Initial reactions. Well, that's an early call. And gets for the reliable early one and it's early initial reactions Well, that's that's really all and when you're looking at these numbers we see 71% votes are in from Waukesha County

That's where I'm from Kelly got 59% of those 71% that are in and pretzel wits has 41% 41% in Waukesha County now part of that is millennials changing voting patterns. Yeah, talk about those numbers. He would want something like mid-60s in that area, right? Can we back up before the election results and explain why this is important? Why should anyone care about the Wisconsin Supreme Court? Well, Crystal and Ryan might have additional thoughts on this, but I will say I think it is correct.

Both the left and the right, you'll notice, have cast this, framed this, as a referendum on Scott Walker's era that he ushered into in Wisconsin. Wisconsin has been on a seesaw for the past decade plus. I was in high school when the Act 10 drama was going down. I had teachers who made up excuses to get out of class and go protest. And it was new for Wisconsin, which is a historically working class. Very often, much of the rural parts of the state all voted Democrat. You know, that district in northern Wisconsin, David Obie had it for 40 years, and it flipped in 2010 with Sean Duffy in the Tea Party years.

Wisconsin has been on the seesaw going back and forth. Scott Walker lost, and it's, you know, who's going to win based on turnout? Who's animated based on turnout? Who's animated based on turnout? And that's why when Wasserman says this is a big win for the pro-choice side, that's because they animated voters on this abortion issue. They animated, they successfully got more pro-choice voters out than they did pro-life voters in a state that was seen in the corporate media as being this beacon of the conservative movement. The conservative movement had taken over Wisconsin and it just was never true. It was never true. And all of these different Act 10 issues, abortion issues, gerrymandering issues are in front of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and will be decided by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. So this is huge. Go ahead, Brian.

And so far, abortion rights have been on the ballot in, what, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, now Wisconsin. And every time, abortion rights voters have come out and upheld them. Interesting how that works, huh? How about that? Yeah. So, like Crystal said, there's this 1840 law on the books, and it's working its way through the courts right now. But while it is, abortion is not happening in Wisconsin. This will change that.

This is a way that people can vote and change their material lives. And then there's the gerrymandering, which is huge. And then there's also the 2024 election. I was going to say, I think that one is also worth a mention. Guys, can we throw up C2 here, please? We have a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel piece where they actually lay it out quite well. The interesting thing to note here is that there is a 4-3 majority on the court for the conservatives. Now that he has lost, and I'm not

even trying to attempt to- Janet. Now that Janet has won, we're going to Janet. Janet, it's not a disrespect. I swear to God. Justice Janet. So now that she has won, she has now won a 10-year term on the court, which means that the next race on the court is not until 2025. So we have a two-year period here where 4-3 liberal majority will stand at a time when abortion is directly before the Supreme Court, voting is before the Supreme Court on gerrymandering, and critically, all of the stop the steal efforts that were happening in the Wisconsin state legislature during the 2020

election, which might have been challenged if there were any Republican victories in the state legislature that might have led to attempts to decertify or have a different interpretation of electoral college law. All of that will now be before a liberal court in a direct flip on the issue. So people forget that Trump's challenge in 2020 was rejected four to three by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Yes. If he had won that, that changes everything. We could have been president. Democrats were able to say it's been seen by 50 judges and all 50 have thrown it out. Get out of here with your nonsense. If they had if they had won in Wisconsin, all bets are off. And by the way, my understanding is the one conservative who sided with the liberals on that, it wasn't on really the merits of the case. It was on some procedural

standing issue. And so there was a lot of, there was very deep concern that if you end up with this conservative majority, that next time around, they may not go the way that they did this time. So that was certainly incredibly important. I just want to underscore the abortion piece, though, because I do think this was central. And, you know, anecdotal reporting from the ground is that every voter was basically like, I'm here because of abortion. I'm here because of abortion. Because it is super real and it's super tangible and it's, you know, super like present in people's lives right now. This law is currently in effect. It is winding its way through the courts, as Ryan said. And now Justice, Justice-elect Janet was quite explicit. I mean, you know, we're used to this

game that like Supreme Court justices play. Oh, I'm just, I'm going to, you know, we're used to this game that like Supreme Court justices play, oh, I'm just, I'm gonna, you know, I don't want to opine on cases that, no, she was pretty clear. Like, I do not think this is appropriate. Some 1840s law is certainly, women couldn't even vote then. Certainly we shouldn't be abiding by that law. So she was very clear about how she would vote on it. And I do think that was probably the dominant issue. To speak to Emily's point about the political dynamics in the state, voters have more often than not in statewide races elected Democrats. But at the legislative level, it is wildly different. Republicans have so much power within the state legislature because of this post-2010 gerrymander. And I know we can talk about this in your eyes, but they only need to win like 40 percent of the vote in order to win majority in the state legislature.

So you have a situation where, you know, a party that has lost statewide repeatedly and lost the popular vote repeatedly still has all of this power in the state. And that's one of the other issues that now Justice-elect Janet has talked openly about how she does not think that that is appropriate and would take a hard look at these lines that have been drawn. So huge, huge stakes here in terms of reproductive rights, huge stakes in terms of gerrymandering, and of course, from a national perspective, certainly huge stakes for future stop-the-steal election nonsense. The congressional delegation of eight

is six Republicans and two Democrats, like that alone, and it's in a 50-50 state, and they have borderline super majorities, right, of Republicans in the state legislature. Well, and this is where I would say Wisconsin Republicans have gotten way too comfortable. I made the same argument in 2018. Like a monopoly. So I want to say, you know, it is absolutely important to look at Wisconsin, and I'm not saying that just because I'm from Wisconsin, as a really good test laboratory for the country at

large. It actually has, it has urban centers, it has rural areas, it has pretty robust exurban and suburban areas. And this is a state that had a really big organizing history, that has a history of socialism, Bob LaFalle and all of those things, because it came out of the early labor movement and because it came out of that period where labor had a lot more power, where rural areas were very different culturally. And so when you look at what's happened in the state of Wisconsin, where you have a lot of people, I mean, Bernie Sanders trounced Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin, trounced her. Donald Trump draws big rally crowds. He's always had a close race in Wisconsin. And that's the country. I mean, really, Wisconsin is the

country. And when you look at an issue where you have Republicans running on crime. You can draw a direct line from, let's just say, you can go from Kenosha to Chicago. Just take that short drive from Kenosha to Chicago. Republicans in Wisconsin were running on crime. They tried to cast Justice-elect Janet as being soft on crime, which they thought in this climate where carjackings are just up astronomically in Milwaukee, that that would do it, that this is how they win. This is their roadmap. And instead, you know, Chicago looks like you're going to have the most left-wing mayor since the 80s. I mean, it's just, it's not what Republicans think it is. Let me throw one more wrench into this because

the question of supermajority was brought up and there's actually a state Senate special election that is also going on, which will determine whether or not Republicans have a supermajority. And this also connects to the state Supreme Court seat that we have been discussing because some of them have already openly been saying that if they get that supermajority, they're going to impeach Justice Janet right away. So they're talking about it already. Like if we get that two thirds, we're coming for her even before, you know, she had even won the election. So it is high stakes, all of these things and quite noteworthy. But I do think one of the things that was most telling to me was the fact that Janet was running very aggressively on,

here's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to let this abortion law, anti-abortion law go into effect. And Dan Kelly, the conservative candidate, was more like, ah, well, I'll talk about that when we get to it. He took more of the typical line, which shows you that he was much less comfortable talking about the issue. Dr. Oz. Looks like the Republican is up by about 100 votes in that special election. Well, how many more votes to be cast?

It was 86% in, and there's 63,000 votes. Wow. I will say some real breaking news coming from my iPad right now. From my mom. Crystal is right. She is right. She is right about the gerrymandering issue as well.

There you go. Thank you, Mrs. Jashinsky. Is that the right way to say it? Thank you, Mrs. Jashinsky. People hate that their vote doesn't count. And we know that in D.C. as people who go out and vote just for fun. It doesn't count for anything. Speak for yourself, Brian.

It's the most flippant crap for exactly that reason. Okay, any other final thoughts here that we want to wrap up? Maybe on Chicago. I know that we still don't have the exact cut there, but Wisconsin, obviously, the fact that we were able to even make a call here tonight

on the stream is actually pretty incredible. Yeah. Should we end the stream by making fun of CNN? I think that'd be a good unifying note for everybody here at the table, everybody out there watching this live. I alluded to this before. I just could not believe it. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So on Monday when Trump – sorry, on Tuesday when Trump was arriving in New York City.

Let's put the tweet up here, please. D1. D1. CNN literally went out of its way to get a camera on board a speedboat, which they chartered, trying to capture a few second shot just of Trump's plane landing in New York City, in addition to an aerial helicopter shot that they also had going on. Now, imagine the mechanics that are going through here. We're hiring a freelance cameraman. We're having a live camera link to this individual. We are chartering a speedboat.

We are, am I, is it the Hudson River? Am I, whatever, is it whatever river? It'd be the East River. Whichever river is there near LaGuardia, that's half of that. We also have video of what this major investment looked like. So, guys, let's go ahead and play this for the audience. If you're watching or if you're listening on Spotify and if you're premium, I urge you to open up your phone, whenever it's safe, to actually watch this.

Let's go ahead and play it for the people. D2 here, please, for the VO. It is just absolutely incredible. Let's go ahead and play it for the people. D2 here, please, for the VO. It is just absolutely incredible. Let's take a listen. I just want to note for viewers, we are seeing former President Trump's plane land here at LaGuardia Airport in New York. That is his flight that he is taking

before he is going to make his way over here to Trump Tower, Phil and Dana, before he is going to be arraigned tomorrow. That, of course, is a- Look at the mastery of that shot. Wait, where'd they, before he is going to be arraigned tomorrow. That of course is a- Look at the mastery of that shot. Wait, where'd they get the second shot? Huh? That was the helicopter, Ryan.

They have the aerial shot. Gotta do it all. What'd they gotta drone to and they all crashed? Yeah. Think about the astronomical amount of money that was spent on those two individual shots. Bottom line is- That is what their news gathering dollars

are going towards. Bottom line is everybody need a premium subscription so gathering dollars are going towards. Bottom line is, everybody need a premium subscription so we can get a breaking point speedboat for the next Trump intake. You're right.

I say CNN has just gone through, sadly, a round of layoffs and is like cutting essential travel and shit and yet, it was that-

How expensive is boat gas? Boat people tell me that boat gas is very expensive. It's very, very expensive. What are we doing over here? You below deck. Yeah, that's true. That's true.

Shout out to Captain Lee. Shout out, no, Captain Lee. It reminds me, do you guys remember when CNN did that whole hologram thing? This was a while back. Yeah, a while back. I remember being in school watching this. I can't even believe this is real. It was like, there's no point of this other than just like you apparently have way too much money to spend.

But at this point, they're literally talking, they're job cutting, they're doing all this. They have a helicopter hovering. First of all, I actually have a lot of questions. Why is a helicopter able to get that close to an active airport? Yeah, that's a little close. And to a runway, given what we know with Buttigieg and the FAA, I'm not so sure.

The speedboat thing, yeah. I mean, just the sheer amount of resources that they're expending on this entire circus. It just comes back to like Trump was great for ratings and for all the talk of Chris Licht saying, oh, we're going to move away from Trump, all this. The day he's back, they went all, that's a Jeff Zucker playbook move. Go all out that you can for Trump. So they haven't can for Trump. Because it wasn't working. They haven't changed at all. The tax wasn't working. Yeah, because it isn't working.

And so now they're right back to their bread and butter. It's just unbearable. So anyway, there you go. Now, if they went stripe fishing, like off the boat afterwards, then maybe they charted like that. Maybe it'd be worth it. They had a little company retreat on it afterwards. Company retreat on it. Some team building.

Don Lemon was even- As Kissel said, become a premium subscriber so that we can get a boat and I guess we could out there. No, we would never spend your hard-earned money on shit like that, which is why their business model

is bullshit and our business model is not. We spent our time here. Wow, we've been up here for almost two and a half hours. Trump only spoke for 20 of it, so that's pretty wild. I'm breaking all this down for you.

We brought you the Trump indictment, the pre-show, I guess, like everything that happened after the arrest. We reacted to the speech. We were able to call some elections here and all that live. Thank you all to our premium subs who not only submitted questions

that were actually great for our legal guests, but also just for enabling the work here. You know, it costs a lot of money to put on these streams. Crew, you know, disrupt the schedule, rent, studio, et cetera. So thank you all for supporting our work. And I just want to say how much more beautiful

this is going to look in our new studio when it's all done very, very soon. I cannot wait. We really can't wait to reveal that to everybody. It's a boat. It's going to look so awesome. It's on a boat. The actual truth is it's a boat.

And that we're retiring now. It's going to look great. Joe Manchin's because he's going to the White House. You are all absolutely going to love this. Whenever we do our next live stream from the desk and from that new studio, I'm so pumped. I can't even stop smiling just thinking about it. So we love all of you. We will post a lot of this over on Wednesday.

Chris and I will be back on Thursday. And then Ryan and Emily will have a special counterpoint show for you guys on Friday. So you are not missing out on anything this week. We'll see you later. See y'all. See you then.