Bulwark Takes - Trump Demands Special Counsel, Still Not Over 2020 Election

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

Sam Stein and Andrew Egger discuss Trump’s latest bleat demanding a special council to investigate the 2020 election, and why this old conspiracy push is as pointless as ever.

Hey guys, me Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bullwork. I'm joined by Andrew Egger, author of Morning Shots. We're here to talk about another bleat. This one on the scale of crazy. I'm going to put it at a, I don't know, 6.7. What do you think? Yeah. As far as the like personal craziness, that's pretty good policy.

Craziness would be like a nine. Cause if you actually follow through on this one, it would be kind of. Yeah. Yeah. As far as the concepts he throws around. throws around 7, 8.7 for that. All right. So this morning, Donald Trump, as he's wanting to do, you know, he's got a lot going on, putting up flag polls.

It's got to deal with the big, beautiful bill may or may not have a war with Iran over its nuclear weapons program. Small things. Anyways, he takes to his favorite platform, True Social, and he writes this. Zero border crossings for the month for Trump, all caps, of course, versus 60,000 for sleepy crooked Joe Biden, a man who lost the 2020 presidential election by landslide. Biden was grossly incompetent, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The evidence is massive and overwhelming of election fraud.

He says a special prosecutor must be appointed. This cannot be allowed to happen again in the United States of America. We don't really need to read the rest because it's just filler. I think that's the first time as president that he has called for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate what happened in 2020. Andrew, what are we, what are we supposed to make of this? Yes, definitely the first time he's called for this specific policy move. Not obviously the first time he has relitigated the 2020 election while in office again, which is kind of funny in and of itself. He brings it up all the time. Right.

2020 presidential election was by far the most corrupt election in the history of our country. There's never been anything like this. It was a rigged election. And it's a shame that we had to go through it. It's very bad for our country. This is a major fraud in our nation. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.

It's sort of hard to know what to do with it, because in theory, the point of a special council is to have somebody outside the Justice Department who is not like beholden to, who's like more independent than the Justice Department, right? Which is like, Trump has never had this desire about anything ever. It's always been exactly the opposite. He was so mad the first time around

when Jeff Sessions appointed a special counsel for what turned into the Russia investigation. So it's like, it's kind of hard to parse his thinking here other than just special counsels are big and important and useful. And we should probably have one of those on this. He's like, I you know, he's like, I had Jack Smith, I had Robert Mueller, like, shouldn't Joe Biden get one of those guys, he kind of glosses over Robert her. But, you know, I think that's right. I think he just thinks it's important. And the one other like historical detail is that in the aftermath of the 2020 election,

in the run up to his leaving office, he really felt like Bill Barr, his attorney general at that time, shafted him by not, you know, looking into this stuff sufficiently. So I feel like it's a little bit wish casting back to wishing that Barr had like been willing to throw this off to some actual ally at that time. But like, again, now it's Pam Bondi, right? Pam Bondi could just look into it for you, man. You don't need a special counsel. Just order your licks fiddle attorney general who like all the people in your administration exists to serve your every whim, get her to look into it.

Do you think that's possibly what's happening here where it's like he's asked her to, and she's just like, I'm busy. And then he's like, well, then point in a special counselor or that too complicated. I hadn't thought of that. No, it doesn't seem impossible. Cause it does seem like if she were to push back on it, that would be the kind of way you would push back on it.

Like, no, Mr. President, we have, look at all these other priorities of yours that we're going after with our time. Like this is this, not that we wouldn't, not that we don't want to, but this is maybe not quite as high up the list. So yeah, I could see that as a but but yes, then that's the rejoinder just okay Yeah, go hire someone new man. Just go look. Okay I want to I want to dive into some of the substance this stuff here

Because and you're gonna forgive me for a long soliloquy a Special counsel to investigate the 2020 election would be so duplicative, so unnecessary, so absurd, because this has been incredibly investigated. Now when you say, well, there's been 60 cases that have been brought before judges and dismissed, you know, the Trump people say, oh, yeah, well, those are dismissed on standing. That's not true. Not all of them are dismissed on standing. But even if you were to put that and say, well, they should have

litigated it and they didn't. I just want to read you some testimonials from Trumpers who acknowledge that this was not a stolen election. So here's some quotes. I'm just going to go with it. Bear with me. Rudy Giuliani to the special committee on January 6th, quote, I do not think the machine stole the election

His chief investigator Bernard Carrick recently passed our IP the committee noted It was impossible for Carrick and his team to determine conclusively Whether there was widespread election fraud or whether that widespread fraud would have altered the outcome of the election That's in the report. Here's acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donahue per the report quote I told the president myself that several times in several conversations that these allegations about ballots being smuggled in in a suitcase and run through the machine several times. It was not true.

We looked at it. We looked at the video. We interviewed the business. Witness is it was not true. Here's Bill Barr on December 1st, 2020. Then he Trump raised the big vote dump as he called it in Detroit. And you know, he said people saw boxes coming into the counting stations at all hours of the morning and so forth. I said, Mr. President, there are 630 precincts in Detroit and unlike elsewhere

in the state, they centralized the counting process. So they're not counted in each precinct. They're moved to counting stations, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Jason Miller, Trump's longtime associate, uh, recounted that at some point, Matt Oskowski, who was the lead data person for the campaign was brought in. And I remembered he delivered to the president in pretty blunt terms that he was going to lose. And I remember he delivered to the president pretty blunt terms, uh, that he was going to lose. Here's Trump campaign lawyer, Alex Cannon quote, I don't remember his exact words,

but he asked me, he being Pence, if you're finding anything. And I said that I was not personally finding anything sufficient to alter the results of the election. He thanked me. That was our interaction. That's Trump campaign lawyer, Alex Cannon. And here's Kellyanne Conway in her book. I may have been the first person Donald Trump trusted in his inner circle, who

told him that he had come up short this time, Conway wrote, team had failed on November 3rd and they failed again afterward by not confronting the candidate with the grim reality of his situation that the proof had not surfaced to support the claims. They denied him the evidence he sought and the respect he was due. I mean, this is just comprehensive. Everyone who's looked into this, even people who are close to Trump are like, no fraud occurred, buddy, get over it. And yet he can't get over it or maybe just is over and

wants to use this as some sort of, I don't know, red herring excuse, whatever you want to call it. Maybe, but I really think it's the former. I don't think it's any accident that none of those people are people who are close to him now, right? I mean, even going back to the last election when Trump was putting together his team, it was very clear that he was gonna use did I win in 2020 as a litmus test for the people who he was gonna surround himself with

the second time. So for instance, JD Vance basically got the job in part because he was the most shameless guy who was willing to kind of look interviewers in the eye and be like, yeah, I would have done the opposite of what Mike Pence did. I really think we should have gone a different direction there. And so I think he has succeeded in kind of putting this reality distortion force field around himself and surrounding him with people who help him keep that up. And he's probably going to be relitigating this one all the way through the end of this term at least would be my guess. Yeah. I remember Vance was asked repeatedly if he thought Trump had lost the election

during the campaign. And then eventually I think he said, no, I do not believe Trump lost the election. No, I think there are serious problems in 2020. So did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use, which is ridiculous. And I guess there are serious problems in 2020. So did Donald Trump lose the election not by the words that I would use? Which is ridiculous. And I guess there's screed and there were there's reports that they were screening potential appointees based on whether they believed in the big lie. And yeah, you know, that's nutty stuff. Bill Kristol in our slacks says this might be a shrewd move by Trump because you get

to put a special counsel and you can maybe like, I don't know. Is Mike Lindell free? I don't know. Someone who's crazy who would be like, yeah, I'm looking into it. I'm finding all this stuff. And then you get to just stand up the original sin. Yeah, it wouldn't be him. It would be one of these less transparently like who's free looking people. It'd be someone more like Harmeet Dillon.

What's the and looking people. It'd be, it'd be someone more like Harmeet Dillon. What's the power? Who is? Yeah. I mean, even, even she like codes crazy in a way that I feel like there are plenty of plenty of people at the nexus of seem sane enough and also would be totally willing to do something like this. Um, that I don't know. The first name that pops into my head is, is Harmeet Dillon. Um, who, who is, but she's busy. Is she, I forget what she does.

Is she like a head to civil rights division? Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Linda's coming off the defamation trial. He's got a lot of free time. Anytime we disagree on a factual position on these, a factual prediction on these, you end up correct. And I end up eating.

Michael, it's not going to be the end doubt. It's not going to be. All right. Let's end with this. Yes or no. Do we get a special counsel on this? No, I don't think there'll be a real one, but Trump will continue to beat the horn. I think so that you think bond is just going to ignore it.

Uh, let's see how many more times he brings it up. They can, they always ignore the first one. You know, this is a, This is a common thing with Trump. You watch Trump, he'll float an idea and everyone will just kind of sit around and be like, all right, is this just something he floated or is this something he's gonna come back to? You know, Bhande Shadir, when she's asked that,

she should say, we're looking into it and I'll give you an answer in two weeks. Right, exactly. Folks don't get it. Look at the other video. I think I'm with you. I don't think they pick it up. I think this was a stray. There's a stray bullet from Trump throwing it out there, just shooting it into the air, seeing where it lands. But I don't know if he starts beating the drum a little bit more. Maybe they do have to do it, but I would be surprised at this point if they do it. I mean, the guy's in office. What does he need? And it totally runs against every other part of like his, his whole project, which is why would he want a part of the branch looking into this that he has less direct control over it just kind of boggles them on that's why you point

a lackey you wouldn't point like a real you've already got your lackeys in there. Right. It's like, it's weird. It's like, it's not, it's not building a better mousetrap as far as I'm concerned. But then again, they are big, powerful words, special counsel. And maybe that's all that matters to him. He wants a special counsel and maybe he's going to get one. Who knows?

We'll see. All right, Andrew, thanks a bunch. My friend. Appreciate you. Thank you guys for watching. Appreciate you too.