Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump Gets RUDE AWAKENING on Debate Just DAYS AWAY

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

Trump’s debate prep for next week’s presidential debate (the only one that matters) is disastrous so far, with Trump finding it nearly impossible to answer for his crimes, fraud, sexual misconduct, assault on women and their reproductive rights, and being the ringleader of the Jan6 insurrection. Michael Popok explains why Trump is likely to repeat his last fatal debate performance against President Biden in 2019. Get 20% off when you go to https://Liquid-IV.com and use code LEGALAF at checkout! Visit https://meidastouch.com for more! Join us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/legalaf Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown Lights On with Jessica Denson: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/lights-on-with-jessica-denson On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As you note, there are ample opportunities for Trump to make flubs as much as he tries to point out what Biden does. Trump is taking this more seriously than people allow publicly, right? I mean, in public, his aides often downplay the prep that he does. He's been doing not standard debate prep. He doesn't have stand-ins as of now for Biden in these debates. So he's not doing mock debates. He's not doing mock debates.

No, that could certainly change. But he's been doing what they've been describing as policy time, where they bring in different people to brief him. A bunch of senators have come in. Last week, Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Eric Schmidt both briefed him at the RNC headquarters after his meetings with lawmakers around Capitol Hill, which was his first major meeting with party members since he became the presumptive nominee. And they are focusing on various issues that could come up, abortion, healthcare, energy,

COVID, and then very specifically, and this was one thing that came up last Thursday, what Trump will say when asked January 6th related questions, particularly his statements about pardoning some of the people who were arrested in connection with the violence that day. So Michael Popak, Legal AF. Donald Trump and Joe Biden are gonna be duking it out in a debate that's coming up in about a week. And Donald Trump has already recognized that he lost the last debate to Donald Trump because he did not exercise any self-restraint, was not prepared properly, and decided instead to be a bully and try to interrupt Joe Biden, sorry about that, over a hundred times much to the frustration of Chris Wallace,

who at the time was moderating it. Maggie Haberman, who basically is on the Trump beat for the New York Times, reported in a recent interview that she has found through her reporting reported in a recent interview that she has found through her reporting that Donald Trump is trying at least to take the upcoming debate seriously. He's doing something he doesn't usually do or never liked to do, whether he was candidate Trump or President Trump, which is to prepare and read.

Yes, there is a presidential candidate that people are thinking about pulling the trigger for who doesn't like to prepare or read. Those are just the qualities you're looking for in the leader of the free world. I mean it's no joke that and it's been reported in the past that Donald Trump did not regularly read his daily presidential briefing book, his daily presidential briefing. In fact they stopped giving it to him because he became bored.

He didn't want to listen to it. And, you know, there's no amount of presidential documents that he either didn't ignore, rip up, try to burn or steal and take with him to Mar-a-Lago. Now he's apparently putting in some minimal effort. I mean, this is a person who got basically a gentleman C in every educational setting he's ever been in, including the University of Pennsylvania, which he brags about. I mean, gentleman C is putting it mildly. This is not somebody that was

a scholar. Joe Biden takes a lot of grief for no reason. He's been a copious note taker. There's just volumes and volumes of notes that he takes at the intersection of history and politics so that he can keep them for posterity and to refer to them for his future decision making. Donald Trump, not at all. So the reporting from Maggie Haberman is he is practicing whatever that means. They're getting him for limited prep and briefing time and debate prep. They're bringing in Republican operatives to play Joe Biden and they're trying to catch Donald Trump up about key issues that they think will come up like a woman's right to choose and the assault on her liberty, equality, and reproductive rights at the hands of Donald Trump and the right-wing MAGA Supreme Court. He's going to take a lot of

flak and a lot of understandable heat and incoming assault from Joe Biden. As Joe Biden tries in the debate in his closing argument to the American people that he should be reelected is going to tie and yoke and lash Donald Trump to his convictions, his fraud into business conduct, his sexual abuse and misconduct against women, all the lawsuits that have gone against him, all the juries that have found against him, all the grand juries that have found against him, all the indictments, all the prosecutions, all the convictions. That is Joe Biden's homework.

Joe Biden's homework is to close the gap and just lash Donald Trump to all of his failings, criminality, immorality, and the like, and don't leave any stone unturned. By the time that debate is over, Joe Biden will have mentioned, he should be mentioning, the convictions of Donald Trump, the fraud that was determined by a jury in, by Judge Angoran in New York, the jury verdicts, two of them, E. Jean Carroll, the hundreds of millions of dollars that he owes for fraud,

for punitive damages, for defamation, for sexual misconduct and rape. And Joe Biden has to drop his gloves. I've talked about this in prior odd takes. This is the time to make the closing argument. There may be other debates, but statistics show that the first debate is the one that matters.

It's the one that leaves the most lasting impression and imprint on voters and their decision-making. Now is the time. Nobody can leave the debate with Joe Biden believing that Donald Trump is anything but somebody whose business record is a sham. It's propped up like a Potemkin village or a house of cards on a fraud company. He could never have made the money that he made after he inherited his money from his father unless he committed fraud. That sexual misconduct related to E. Jean Carroll and all the other women who testified in front of the jury compellingly about them being abused by Donald Trump. That has to resonate. The abortion decision dobs from two years ago and what's happened since with more than 13 states

ripping away a woman's right to choose. That has to be front and center in the debate. Summer is jam packed and the heat, no joke. You got to prioritize hydration. We're made from 60 to 70% water. So when we're dehydrated, we feel imbalanced. You know the signs, fogginess and fatigue. With all the drinks out there,

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Get 20% off your first order of Liquid IV when you go to liquidiv.com and use code LEGALAF at checkout. That's 20% off your first order when you shop better hydration using promo code LEGALAF at liquidiv.com. And Donald Trump's gonna have to be made to answer for what has happened to women in America

have been reduced to second-class citizens with limited civil rights and no reproductive rights and no rights of bodily autonomy because of Donald Trump and who he placed those three Supreme Court justices on the Supreme Court. And once they got the numbers, that out of step right wing court trying to shove it down everybody's throats, their church, religion,

right wing based agenda and judicial activism. That has to be the focus of this debate. And Donald Trump, he can prep all he wants about his failed immigration policy that led to the border crisis, his failed women's rights policies, his failed voting rights policies. And then he's gonna have to answer for Jan 6th in a way that he's never have. Donald Trump sits silently at hearings and arraignments and oral arguments for the Supreme Court. He never speaks. He lets his cheap suited lawyers do the talking

in circular unhinged legal reasoning that sometimes resonates with certain judges, but usually does not. But now in a debate, he's going to have to answer for Jan 6th his role in trying to overturn the will of the people, his role as the ringleader, as the hub of the conspiracy, and all the steps that it took from stop the steal, denying the legitimacy of the election even before it began, denying the legitimacy of mail-in ballots and absentee ballots, denying the legitimacy of votes made by armed forces, denying the count,

denying everything, even though he lost 70 lawsuits, every state and federal judge has found that he was wrong, his legal theory was wrong, his own lawyers who are now either disbarred, discredited, or felons or indicted were wrong. And he worked through a group of sycophants and people in the Department of Justice like Jeff Clark and others who have now been indicted or about to be in order to try to steal the election from Joe Biden and pressure campaign on Mike Pence. All of that work on Jan 6th and their insurrection

and the attack on the Capitol and the battle for the soul of democracy that happened on Jan 6th has to be front and center in this debate. I don't care how many hours it is. That's Joe Biden's task, but it's also Donald Trump's task to try to answer for all of these things. I mean, in normal circumstances,

it would be an impossible task and it is an impossible task. Can you imagine any prior presidential candidate having to answer for any one of the things that I've just outlined on this hot take? Any one of them would tank his career. In the not too distant past, we've had presidential candidates who have admitted to either getting mental health help or that they cry. And that was a deal killer for the American people. We don't want a crier. We don't want somebody that addresses his mental health.

George Bush looked at his watch while he was debating Clinton and that killed him. Walter Mondale had a terrible debate performance on one slip of the tongue. Gerald Ford mistook what was going on with the Iron Curtain and who was the enemy, and that killed his career. What I just laid out in this hot take in the last eight minutes, any one of these things would be a disqualifier for Donald Trump. Collectively, together, we have to fight through Trump fatigue. We have to put this closing argument to the American people in an efficient, elegant way that Joe Biden will do. And no amount of prep or preparation by Donald Trump is going to help.

I don't care how much he reviews his debate prep material, his binders, how many people they trot in to act like Joe Biden. He is going to be underwater quickly because there is no compelling argument about the Dobbs decision taking away a woman's right to choose, what he's done about voting rights, the fraud that he's perpetrated on the American people and in his business life and on Jan 6 and against women and sexual misconduct against women. Even Mitt Romney has said that he drew the line when the person got a judge to be a sexual abuser and he won't vote for the guy. That's stopped others who see their own political

fortunes tied to Donald Trump. That's what the debate's all about and that's why I thought the reporting by Maggie Haberman has been so important. And the fact that he's admitted, Donald Trump's admitted that he interrupted Biden too many times and it was a bad look. It was known as a political, the equivalent of a food fight, the worst presidential debate in living memory. Donald Trump can't afford another one of those. Although it will naturally happen because of the topics as long as Joe Biden honestly keeps on track and attacks and goes into attack mode. I know it's unsavory, right? You want to be the president. You want to be above the fray. This is the fray. The vote is the fray. The election and the soul of America is the fray. You can't be above it. The election and the soul of America is the fray.

You can't be above it. You got to be in it. As we've said before on Might is Touch and on Legal AF, this is a competitive sport. This is a contact sport and we've got to win it. And it's led by Joe Biden at the top. So we will see next week's debate. It's going to be on CNN. It's anchored by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. And I'm sure they're doing a great job in getting prepared. We'll continue to follow it. We'll have clips. We'll do a live report of the debate. We'll do

a live stream of the debate and with commentary here on the Midas Touch Network and on Legal AF. And then you can follow us on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern time. We have a show, a full length podcast called Legal AF. And I co-anchor it on Wednesdays with Karen Friedman and Nick Niflo. Saturdays with Ben Micellis. And then hot takes like this one

at the intersection of law and politics. Lawyers talking about things, they know what they're talking about. How refreshing, right here on the Midas Touch Network. If you like what I'm doing, thumbs up, leave a comment. I don't know why I winked. It'll help with the ratings, help with the algorithmic gods. It'll keep us on the air.

So until my next hot take, until my next Legal AF, this is Michael Popak reporting. Heary, heary, Legal AF Law Breakdown is now in session. Go beyond the headlines and get a deep dive into the important legal concepts you need to know and we discuss every day on Legal AF. Exclusive content you won't find anywhere else. All for the price of a couple of cups of coffee. Join us at patreon.com slash Legal AF. That's patreon.com slash

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