Legal AF by MeidasTouch - Trump LOSES BIG in Court AND in Congress

Episode Date: December 22, 2024

Ben Meiselas and Michael Popok are back for a new update at the intersection of law and politics on the Legal AF Podcast. On tonight's show, Ben and Popok cover (1) Democrats eating MAGA's lunch, and what the way the continuing resolution to keep the Government from being shut down was passed, means for the future ability of Dems to grind Trump and the MAGA House to a halt; 2) will Judge Merchan sentence Trump for the 34 felony convictions in 2025; 3) will President Biden with a stroke of a pen, have the Equal Rights Amendment to benefit women and their reproductive rights, announced as a Constitutional amendment; Popok and Ben pop the balloon on the 14th Amendment conspiracy theories out there as a route to deny Trump the presidency, and so much more at the intersection of law and politics. Support our sponsors: Zbiotics: Head to https://zbiotics.com/LegalAF to get 15% off your first order when you use LEGALAF at checkout. DeleteME: Go to https://joindeleteme.com/LEGALAF and use promo code LEGALAF for 20% off. Fatty15: Get an additional 15% off their 90-day subscription Starter Kit by going to https://fatty15.com/LEGALAF and using code LEGALAF at checkout. Mint Mobile: Get a 3-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month when you go to https://mintmobile.com/LEGALAF Subscribe to the new Legal AF channel: https://youtube.com/@LegalAFMTN Subscribe to Meidas+ at https://meidasplus.com 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 MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial 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 On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starring Michael Fassbender and Richard Gere. Whatever it takes, make it invisible. The Agency, new series now streaming exclusively on Paramount Plus. As a Fizz member, you can look forward to free data, big savings on plans, and having your unused data roll over to the following month, every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. Donald Trump lashing out after losing a critical immunity ruling in the New York criminal case where he was found guilty of 34 felony counts. That means that the 34 felony counts remain, Donald Trump remains a felon.

We move to the next phase, which is what's going to happen with sentencing. Michael Popak and I will break that down. Michael Popak also has been analyzing like no one else, the Equal Rights Amendment. What is it? Is it something that the national archivists will actually put into the constitution. Will it become an amendment in my interview with president Biden in the Roosevelt room of the West wing president Biden did say he wants to see. The ERA become the law of the land.

I thought that was one of the major points that he said during that interview. I thought that was one of the major points that he said during that interview. Also, federal judges being confirmed by the Senate. President Biden has now bested Donald Trump's federal judge appointments. 235 federal judges have been confirmed. So while Donald Trump's out there making weird meme posts on his social media platform, President Biden's had his head down. So has the Democrats in the Senate and they've been pushing through federal judge after federal judge, the most diverse and qualified and experienced

judiciary ever. We will break that down. Also want to address the 14th amendment section three, disqualification issues regarding Donald Trump. This is something that we've addressed meticulously here at the Midas Touch network about a year ago, where we had the foremost experts discuss the 14th Amendment Section 3, specifically the main author of the amicus brief, Judge Luddig, widely viewed as one of the most respectable judges, retired judges out there,

did multiple interviews with Michael Popak where we broke it down. There was a Supreme Court ruling about a year ago as well, a unanimous nine to zero ruling, which found that Trump was not disqualified that Michael Popok and I both disagreed with that ruling. The Supreme court can't even usually agree that the sky is blue on a nine to zero ruling, but they ruled about a year ago that disqualification did not apply. And I think we've analyzed it.

We've criticized the ruling from every angle, but we will address it once again. This is Legal AF. You know, Michael Popok, I want to give a shout out to all the legal papers and Midas Mighty out there, because the fact that we were selected to do that interview of president Biden in the West wing of the white house, it's an honor, something I took very seriously. And it is something though, that more importantly, I share with all the legal AFers and the Midas Mighty out there. It's really because the power of this community.

I think that we were selected to do that interview. And I truly hope, I really sincerely hope that we made you proud with that interview and showed how you can do a dignified, respectful, but also hard hitting interview where you can actually get answers and hear President Biden discuss his accomplishments, his legacies, his regrets, but you can listen to him and not make the story about the host, but make the story about what the president is actually saying if we listen. So I hope that's an example we

set as well. Michael Pope. Yeah, that's a great thanks, Ben. That's a great segue. I wanted to I wanted to thank you compliment you and talk briefly about mainstream media's reaction to try to step on the story that the little the little engine that could Midas Touch Network got the get of the last exclusive interview of President Biden and they didn't. And within hours of that,

you and I talked about this last night, within hours of that, we got these ridiculous stories that were like launched to try to step on Midas Touch and what you did with like the Wall Street Journal. You can just hear it in the newsroom with Rupert Murdoch. Run that story from four years ago about them, you know, the handlers for Joe Biden giving him nap time during certain critical moments. Four years ago, I'm like, oh, I'm sorry, we had a president aging in place and his staff

accommodated him, but they had to run. And then Chris Saliza, who I used to have a lot of respect for, who I thought was a direct response to trying to step on our story and step on your exclusive, comes out with, I have a confession to make. I'm like, oh, here we go. I should have been harder on the Biden administration

and asking questions about Joe Biden's mental capacity or whatever. I'm like, is this just because it just burns their ass that Midas Touch Network, or as I like to joke, the Garage Band is now playing Madison Square Garden? It's just they can't, but it's a compliment. It's a compliment to you, your brothers, Legal AFers, this audience, what we've all contributed,

that you were selected, that we were selected for you to go into that room together. And yeah, our audience should be, without them there would be no Ben, well there'd be a Ben Micellus, but there wouldn't be a Midas Touch Network and not doing the great things that they're doing. We got a lot to talk about on this show.

We have a lot of, we're not gonna do it all on the show, but we have a lot of amazing things that you and I and the others on the network have talked about for 2025. New shows, not ready to announce. New things that you and I are doing, not ready to announce. So big, we can't even announce it yet. But I'm really, really excited about this. I'm not in lame duck mode, even though the presidency is. And we're watching, one of the things you and I are going to talk about is we're watching the Democrats, almost like machine learning. They're learning now in a dress rehearsal, in this lame duck session, how to grind down

Mike Johnson, how to grind down the Republicans in MAGA in both the House and in the Senate, and how to oppose them effectively as a disciplined, unified party in opposition. And what that means for Donald Trump's worst instincts to try to bring this country to the brink of constitutional crises on a daily basis through his executive orders and other things, they are learning and they are winning. You've done a lot of great hot takes on that. The House, Hakeem Jeffries, I mean, nobody, I mean he learned at the knee of Nancy Pelosi.

He is an amazing effective leader, keeping that, the Democrats unified and whipped together. And then we just saw, we'll talk about it on this show today. We just saw what Dick Durbin and Chuck Schumer did and are going to do in terms of getting those federal judges. And it's not just about getting the 254 federal judges appointed now, it's about being ready to oppose in the first two years, which is about all he's got, Donald Trump and the efforts of MAGA to try to expand the federal judiciary, to add two or three hundred more seats to give him a Reagan-like reshape the federal judiciary and maybe the Supreme Court.

But I have a lot more confidence having watched the Democrats in action over the last three weeks than I did coming off of November 5th. Well, you wonder how the MAGA Republicans are going to be able to pass any bill when they couldn't even get a continuing resolution passed without Democrats once again bailing them out. And I think as we analyze what went down in this continuing resolution, it once again proves our thesis here correct, is that Donald Trump is actually the worst negotiator ever. And one of the ways I describe this, and I think I can go back and discuss

the interview with president Biden in the sense of that interview took place in the Roosevelt room named after Teddy Roosevelt and FDR Teddy Roosevelt, former president said, a true power of a leader is you walk soft and you carry a big stick to the big stick policy. And it's very sun zoo like in its kind of philosophical output that really a strong person doesn't go around with the court in hands and goes, I'm strong, I'm strong. I'm the toughest. I'm so strong.

around with accordion hands and goes, I'm strong, I'm strong, I'm the toughest, I'm so strong. Real power is exercised delicately, but forcefully in the right moments. And real powerful people historically went about it with humility, but people knew the power and you just don't mess with it. That was President Biden's philosophy. I think in our TikTok social media age, unfortunately, we've exalted the small stick, the micro stick, the Donald Trumps who are obnoxious and loud and they puff and they puff and they pound their chest. But then when it comes down to it, they back down and they show weakness, micro sticks, small stick.

Donald Trump is how I like to view it. And so when it came to this continuing resolution, I'll just address it very quickly. What did Donald Trump and Elon Musk do? Well, they blocked a bill that would have stopped a government shutdown earlier in the week. And then what they did after blocking that bill is Donald Trump said, under no circumstances at all, can a continuing resolution be passed unless we either abolish the debt ceiling or we extend the debt ceiling expansion, or when you have to increase the debt ceiling to 2029.

Donald Trump posted about this. He said, otherwise you shut it down. And he ordered the people to do it. Those posts are public. And then Elon Musk talked about like primaring people in the Republican party. And ultimately, what did the final bill that was passed look like? It had nothing about what Trump said. It had nothing to do with delaying the debt ceiling vote to 2029 or abolishing the debt

ceiling. That's the one thing Trump said he wanted and that wasn't actually in the bill. What was removed from the bill originally was pediatric cancer research, which somehow Trump and Magas viewed that as a win. But then what the Democrats did negotiating smart is they realized, oh wait a minute, a standalone version of that pediatric cancer funding had already been passed in the house. So we're just going to pass it in the Senate now too. And so that got in through a separate bill as well, in addition to the

continuing resolution that was ultimately the exact opposite of what Trump said that he wanted. And what I was 138 Republicans just didn't follow what Donald Trump said. This is a pattern that we see with Donald Trump over and over again. And you better believe if I'm recognizing that, that our enemies recognize that that's his pathology. Also, some of our allies do as well when Trump's threatening the tariffs and all of these things. I think that it should

be taken seriously in the sense that Trump is in the most position of power in the world, like that's the reality of it, and he can do these things, but ultimately he just sometimes goes out and like golfs and he's not in the weeds. He doesn't know the issues and then he folds and then he capitulates. And so, you know, when I teach negotiation in my law school classes, quite literally Donald Trump's negotiating style would be everything that you don't do when I would do my negotiation seminars.

I mean, to set these unrealistic benchmarks, you don't meet them. And then you kind of rinse and repeat that over again. So Popak, a little bit of a detour there, but I thought it was important to talk about negotiation styles and to contrast President Biden's soft spoken, but firm delivery of what he promised versus Trump's braggadocious bravado, but ultimately not getting the results and constantly changing the trajectory of things. So let me respond this way. I can also do an update on a hot take I did about the Chinese investment restriction that ended up in the continuing resolution bill. And there's no

other way to put this. The Democrats and Hakeem Jeffries ate the MAGA lunch, ate their lunch when it came to this continuing resolution. And it is a blueprint for how they will do so in the future. You're right. It was effectively, the speaker of the house was effectively Hakeem Jeffries, not named Mike Johnson. I don't care what it says on his door or what office he occupies. Hakeem Jeffries is effectively and may well be on key issues going forward, the speaker

of the house and he's the Democrat. The jumping up and down by Donald Trump and all of the weird theatrics and performative art pieces by Musk only led, and this is a good sign for democracy and fair-minded, free-thinking people, Elon Musk just learned a hard lesson that he's not going to be able to get his way and he's not going to be able from this outside of the government fake agency be able to affect the real change that he wants to because it just failed miserably. Most of what Elon Musk wanted to be out of the resolution, continuing funding resolution, is in. And the thing that I was most concerned about, and I wanted the Democrats to stand up for,

was the limitations on American capital being used to prop up Chinese military-grade technology. We don't need to help our enemies by giving them investments to help with their AI, their technology, and their weapons systems and their chip manufacturing that's gonna be used against us at a time of war. And there was tremendous national security implications of that. Of course, Donald Trump, who's busy inviting

the Chinese president to his inauguration and his family has ties to China and continues to have ties to China and Musk has ties to China, they opposed that part of the bill. It is in the bill. That's all I needed to see. The fact that the Chinese, the limitations for national security purposes on Chinese investment in many of their sectors ended up in the bill and Musk

couldn't do anything about it and Donald Trump couldn't do anything about it is a fantastic preview of what the Democrats are going to be able to do to grind Donald Trump down to size, make him the lamest of lame duck presidents almost on the way in. I know I keep saying it, but I want to, I want to, I want to state the obvious. Donald Trump does not have an eight year runway to do maximum damage. He is a short tracker. He is a short timer. He's acting like a short tracker and a short timer.

He's going to have to try to do maximum destruction within just about a two year period. And we need to box him into that. Now, as I joked on a hot take, a bull in a china shop can do maximum damage in two years. I get it. But it's not four years and it's certainly not eight years. So we have to start thinking like our opponent, that our opponent is on a very short leash and a very short time interval to do these things. And if we can just counterpunch and defend and box in, then we can limit severely, we can limit the damage of a Donald Trump presidency, especially in the first two years.

Because look, Donald Trump is obsessed with Donald Trump. He doesn't give a crap about America. He cares about having his name everywhere, his own view of being respected and having power. He enjoys inflicting humiliation on people by bullying them on social media. It's weird behavior. It's the exact opposite of the qualities of leadership that I think we should impart on our children and future generations or anyone. I mean, just take a look, Michael Popock,

at what he posted after Justice Mershon ruled that in the New York criminal case where Trump was convicted on 34 separate felony counts that Donald Trump does not have absolute immunity pursuant to the United States Supreme Court ruling. Show you the post in just a moment, but recall the United States Supreme Court ruled that a president has absolute immunity during the presidency for Number three, immunity from having evidence in criminal cases be introduced that involve core constitutional functions or official acts. So one of the things that Donald Trump argued, because that Supreme Court ruling was handed

down after Trump was criminally convicted on 34 separate felony counts was, Justice Mershon, I just got this ruling from the Supreme Court, and they also addressed this issue of evidentiary immunity. Justice Mershon, you remember the prosecution and getting this conviction had evidence of tweets that were made by Donald Trump, had evidence of testimony of Hope Hicks and Madeline Westerhout, White House employees about things that happened in the White House. The coverup stuff that happened after the criminal conduct took place, that evidence was introduced ultimately to show intent and the prosecutor said,

that was some pretty powerful evidence. Do you remember that Justice Mershon? And so Justice Mershon had to analyze Donald Trump's motion to dismiss on absolute immunity grounds. And ultimately Mershon said Trump is not entitled to absolute immunity. Justice Mershon said, first, the conduct at issue, the criminal conduct involving hush money payments to porn stars to make fraudulent business transactions, that happened before the presidency.

Number two, the cover-up, which may have been demonstrated through this evidence of some things that happened while you were in office, it relates to hush money, porn payments, fraudulent business transactions, and what have you. That's not official. That's not core constitutional functions. So no, that was allowed to come in. You don't get immunity for that. Justice Murchon says, also your lawyers did not assert the appropriate objections and assert the absolute immunity objection. Therefore, most of this is waived to begin with. And then Justice Murchon says, you know what?

Even if I improperly allowed this evidence in, um, of some of your official acts, the criminal conduct in this case was so utterly overwhelming that it was harmless error that some of this testimony came in Michael Popak, harmless error. Isn't that the exact analysis that the response reaction and what went down. I want to remind everybody about your YouTube channel, Michael Pope, OX YouTube channel at legal.com. And I want to remind everybody about the YouTube channel, Michael Pope, OX YouTube

channel at legal.com. And I want to remind everybody about your YouTube channel, Michael Pope Ock's YouTube channel at legal AF. Just search legal AF on YouTube and check it out. And also while you're searching YouTube, please make sure to check out the exclusive interview I did in the Roosevelt room with president Biden. And if you can, it really, really helps us. If you can share that interview with 10, 15, 20 people,

you know, just text message it to as many people and ask them to send it to people. I wanna make sure that interview gets in front of as many people as possible. I think it's a historic one. Let's take our first quick break of the show. Let's face it, after a night with drinks, I don't bounce back the next day like I used

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Welcome back to LegalAF. Michael Popak. I last, we last left off, I was giving, um, some description about what went down in New York where they rejected Trump's immunity. I'll just flash this for a second. Trump whining in a completely illegal psychotic order, deeply conflicted, corrupt, biased, incompetent, Mershon, disrespected the Constitution, he's illegitimate, radical, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah,

people know what these are, I'm not gonna read the rest of it. I'm not gonna give him time. Popak, give me your analysis of what went down. Yeah, I'm fortunate to have been practicing law in New York for 34 years and no Judge Mershon in his work. And it's just as we predicted. I mean, I don't want to just twist our arms

into a not pat ourselves on the back. But as I joke on one of my social media posts, Legal AF is rare. I think I call it, it's not never wrong, but we're rarely wrong. And sometimes we get it right on point. To bring everybody up to speed, there have been for a while now two motions pending with Judge Murchon.

One was this one for immunity, and not immunity in the way we shorthanded on this show. Not whether Donald Trump's actions, which formed the basis of him being convicted 34 times, is immune. Even his lawyers didn't argue that. That made him pissed off Donald Trump that he's forgotten that his lawyers weren't arguing that the things that happened before Donald Trump was president were immune or that the core of the conspiracy to first have a sex act with Stormy Daniels, then pay her off and use the National Enquirer

and Michael Cohen in order to do it for the purposes of election interference to keep it out from being an October surprise of October of 2016 before he was elected. They didn't even argue. That was immune under the immunity decision of Trump versus the US by the United States Supreme Court. All they were left with arguing, as the judge reminded them in his 41 page decision, is that there was certain evidence,

small, discreet needles in a haystack of mountains of evidence against Donald Trump, small little things, Hope Hicks testifying about small moments when she was in the White House after the conspiracy was basically completed. Remember, the conspiracy is over. As I like to say, the cover-up already happened. It's the payback, the check, you know, how he paid it off.

Some of that happened while he was in the White House. But the conspiracy was sort of complete before the catch and kill of the story was complete already. Hope Hicks, press secretary on campaign, press secretary for those minutes in the White House. Madeline Westerhoof, the executive assistant in charge of ordering lunch and scheduling for the day. Okay. And a couple of meetings Michael Cohen had in the White House in order to like make sure he's getting paid or repaid because he laid out the money to hide it. That was part of the conspiracy. And the judge says, that's all you got is whether any of that evidence was official act and therefore

could not be used against you because this case is not as the judge reminded everybody. What I loved about the ruling, Ben, is that the judge said, I read the case, that Trump versus U.S. I understand the case, and I understand how it maps onto this conviction and prosecution before you were president and how it doesn't. And I'm going to teach you in 41 pages that I understand the case, and here is my analysis for appellate purposes, for the next level of appeal. And he said, this is not the Trump versus US case.

That there, the fundamental question was whether a person who was in the presidency can be prosecuted for conduct, and they will quibble about which type of conduct while they're in office for crimes that may have been committed and then they said well you're gonna have to do your analysis. Was it core constitutional like making treaties and pardons? Was it official conduct like

on your it's like it's like on your job description for president stretched to its outer boundaries or is it prosecutable private conduct? Because the president is a person and he can do all those things. He can be presidential, he can be court constitutional, and he can be a guy that does bad things. And so that's how the court figured that out. The judge says, but that's not the issue here.

The issue here is whether the evidence was being used about admittedly that you've conceded not related to presidential function because it all happened before he was president but the some of this evidence about when he was president does that somehow implicate any aspect of the ruling and the and the judge said no and as you said Ben first of all you didn't preserve most of it you have to object to these things you can't have having been you and our trial lawyers or have been. And you have to object in order to give the judge the opportunity to make a ruling.

So you have to raise your hand or go to the bench. You have to say objection, supremacy clause or immunity or something like that. And they said, well, we didn't know about it because the ruling came out after. No, you have to still you know about these things. The judge says all your deadlines for filing your motions on these things and all the objections in court passed. So on Michael Cohen, the part about him in the White House, you never preserve that. So forget it. And on Madeline Westerhoek, the same thing. The only thing he gave them as preserved properly was for some reason, they did jump up and down properly for Hope Hicks and made a proper objection.

So it was preserved. He then did the full analysis, but that was his, that was his first thing. Now, having said that, we then got, I'll just touch on this for a minute. We got this weird release of a set of papers we didn't know existed about three or four days after the order came out. Apparently, Donald Trump, and this just got ordered to be published on the docket by the judge because it's a public trial.

This is a public criminal justice system we have in America. So eventually everything ends up on the docket. And what happened was apparently in the beginning of December, Donald Trump's lawyers sent a letter that we didn't know about to the judge telling him he didn't even have jurisdiction to make this decision, that he was divested of jurisdiction because of the immunity decision. And the judge was like, you can see

what the judges are actually like, yeah, no, I don't, it's not persuasive. And he issued his ruling. They also raised for a moment that there was some sort of jury tampering. You might have seen, people might have seen that in the media. I did something on it. About a juror went to Donald Trump's lawyers and said there was misconduct that infected the jury selection process. And the judge's like, okay, so then bring a motion for jury misconduct to overturn the conviction. You filed all of your motions. You just filed a new one for, to vacate

or throw away the judgment or conviction on the grounds of justice. You didn't mention it there. So if you want to bring it, bring it, and I'll do a full hearing. We'll bring the juror in. But if you don't, then stop talking about it. So they never filed that motion.

So that was interesting. They even had a juror and they thought they had something, but they didn't want a hearing about it. Just shows you how much lack of credibility these lawyers are. And let me remind everybody, these are the lawyers who got promoted and are now gonna be in the number two

and number three chairs in the Department of Justice. But they're not, this is to Karen Freeman at NIFILO, our partner's credit, they're not state court practitioners. They don't know their way around a state court trial the way I do or the way you do in California. And they made some major errors because they're rusty. Because these guys are federal litigators

and they were federal prosecutors and they rarely went to trial. So trial is a skill, it's a muscle. And if you don't use it, it atrophies. I can't tell you how many times in my career I went against older lawyers who hadn't been in the courtroom in a long, long time and I ate their lunch and they almost committed foul practice and or mistrial at a number of times in cases against me because I had

sharper skills than they did. I was more, I was more with it. So we're waiting on one more ruling before we get to that sentencing. The one more ruling I'm sure is coming out before I want to say before Christmas although we're rapidly moving in to Christmas it could be just after and that is on their second motion Trump's second motion that justice should because he won the election and is now president-elect or will be soon it that means you just throw out the

jury's 12-0 34 count conviction against. There's no law that says that. They didn't do the analysis that says that. The prosecutors reminded the judge that under all the factors that are required to be analyzed, they've missed the boat or haven't bothered, and the judge is about to rule. Assuming the judge rules, make another prediction here, against, pardon me, Donald Trump, and denies the second motion to throw away the convictions of the jury. The only thing left for the judge now is on sentencing before, really before an appeal.

And the question I have for you, Ben, is if he rules before Jan 20, that there is no barrier or barricade to him now moving to sentencing phase? Does he move to the sentencing phase so this all gets wrapped up into one appeal before the inauguration, suspending the start of the sentence, obviously until after the guy's president, or does he let the whole thing go up on appeal first and come back four years from now to do the sentencing? Well, he has, I think three options when it comes to sentencing. One, sentence Trump now, and then stay the sentence, delay the sentence so that it kicks into effect after Trump's term is over and a prison sentence begins.

Number two, stay the ruling, meaning pause the ruling on the sentencing issue and kick that until after the election or rather after 2028 and then readdress sentencing in the 2028 timeframe. Or three, this is an option that happens sometimes with dead people who can't be sentenced because they're dead. So posthumously they're proclaimed a felon, they're declared what the sentence would have been to kind of put that scarlet letter but then ultimately suspend the sentence because they're dead and they can't be sentenced. And so those three options were discussed by the district attorney's office. Um, and we'll see, I don't know. Look, I I'm confident that Trump is not going to, unfortunately, but this is just, we'd have to speak the truth here.

Trump is not going to be put into a prison during his term in office. That's not going to happen. Um, he's not going to be going to be like some of the individuals you and I talked about on our last Legal AF, who are MAGA Republicans in different states, who are serving their commissionerships literally from prison for serious felony charges. That's not going to happen here. So I don't know, Popak, but those are the options that are before Justice Mershon. His order denying absolute immunity was strongly worded, especially where he said there was overwhelming evidence of Trump's guilt and crimes. That tells me Mershon isn't fazed or worried or feels threatened by

the fact that Donald Trump threatens him or Trump's position as president-elect. So that at least instructs me and I don't think Mershan's going to do a weak thing. Mershan's going to do what he thinks the law requires, even if that's going to make Mershan get attacked. That's my view. I agree. I agree with you.

I think he's, and in the response to the letter, which we're not going to flash on the screen, but in the response to the letter that went on about the jury misconduct, he made it clear, not that one, he made it clear, Judge Mershon did, that he is, I have one more ruling to make, I will make that ruling, I have the authority and the jurisdiction to make that ruling. And that one's interesting Ben, just to remind everybody or to tell them for the first time here. But Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg smartly reminded the court in his, I think it was like 80 pages to oppose the justice motions. They had to go through like every factor of this

analysis based on this case in New York. At one point, the whole section was just on effectively what you and I in the law call unclean hands. It was that Donald Trump doesn't get to use equity and have you throw away a jury conviction because he can't ask for equity or justice or mercy because he has unclean hands. Look at it and then they listed all of the attacks on the system, on the families of the judges, the jurors, the grand jurors, Alvin Bragg with a baseball bat, you know, is the best of all of, and we've said from the beginning and this back to that social media post, it is beyond insanity for Donald Trump to continue to attack the

person who holds his liberty literally in the palm of his hands and can use these kind of act outs and abusive conduct to bake it into the sentencing analysis. And you know, I'm not saying that Trump needs to like suck up to Mershon. It's impossible to do at this point. But like how about shut the legal AF up and stop attacking the guy who's about to sentence you. But he's you know, he's constantly pressurizing the system, goading the judge to make a false or misstep, which

he hasn't in over three years. Because in his mind, not that we're going to talk about it today, he kept pressuring and pressurizing Fonny Willis, and Fonny Willis screwed up in his mind and did something that gave him the ability, which I'm not sure we're even touching on today, but just to transition there for some one second We've got an intermediary appellate court in Georgia that just tossed her as prosecutor, right Not the indictment you and I went back and forth on our text messages to make sure before we did our hot takes the indictment Still stands, but when that prosecution counsel in Georgia picks the next prosecutor and it's a white Republican

That indictments on life support. That's why funny. Well, it's also taken an appeal on that but So Trump has been rewarded he thinks by constantly hitting our Guardrails of democracy and our criminal court system with his firehose He's gonna continue to do that right up until the bitter end, until he's sentenced. You know, look, Bolton County District Attorney Fonny Willis and her office had a horrible loss in the Young Thug Rico case. That was their other high-profile Rico case. It was a criminal trial for about a year. And there were two big RICO cases, the

Trump RICO case and then the Young Thug RICO case. And the Young Thug was nothing short of a prosecutorial disaster and embarrassment, you know, you name it. And I think unfortunately that also empowered the perspective of the Georgia Court of Appeals and the entire judiciary to have a very kind of dim view of the prosecution that was taking place in Fulton County, whether it was express or implicit judges talk, lawyers talk, and that outcome was very much, I think, on the minds of a lot of those judges as well when they said, how'd you not win this young thug case? You put all of your offices resources, and that was just like the Trump case, another

Rico case. You know, Popak, I think it's important though, to remind our viewers as well, that this is a show of practicing lawyers or formerly practicing lawyers who litigated these types of issues. At the highest level. Karen Friedman Agnifilo right now is a defense attorney at the highest level. She was the number two in the Manhattan district attorney's office. She's currently representing Luigi Mangione. You and I, in our perspective, is that everybody is entitled to have competent counsel. And having Karen Friedman Agnifilo as your lawyer is not just competent counsel, but literally probably the best lawyer,

criminal defense lawyer in the United States. So Karen's perspective comes from 30 plus years at the highest level of experience in these areas. Michael Popok, a practicing lawyer for the same period of time, a senior lawyer, a partner at the top law firm, someone who's litigated these types of cases in court across the country. And then we bring on experts as well. And then people know my background.

I was a civil rights litigator. I represented Colin Kaepernick, but then we bring on the top experts as well. We bring on Judge Ludwig, widely viewed as the most, you know, one of the best reputations of helping other people become judges. We bring on constitutional experts and scholars with a framework and a perspective here of always being honest, not trying to hype things up. We can disagree with where the rulings are and we cover these things throughout their lifeline and we don't latch on to some trend all of a sudden because there's some kind of trendy discussion about an issue.

We talk about the arc of all of these issues. So when we come back from our next break, I want to talk about the Constitution and I want to talk about two things. Number one, an actual constitutional amendment, 14th Amendment, section three. But before that I want to talk about the Equal Rights Amendment, the ERA, which many people believe should be the latest constitutional amendment. There's some fight there. PO-PAC broke it down, but we'll explain these things to you comprehensively, accurately, and truthfully, even if sometimes the truth hurts. We're giving you our legal analysis based and

steeped in years of experience in these areas. And I think that's the most important thing to do and to have that discernment when you are a viewer consuming this type of legal coverage, legal coverage. We'll be right back after our last quick break. You know when you discover a new binge-worthy show or a song that you bump on repeat and you got to share it with your friends so they can experience just how awesome it is.

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Thank you to our pro democracy sponsors there. Everybody, if you haven't checked it out already, please make sure you take a look at that exclusive interview we did with president Biden. Share it with 10, 20, 30 friends, even one friend, just let people know about it. Popak, what's the ERA? Why are people talking about the ERA? Why did president Biden say to me in the interview that he would like to see the ERA become the law of the land?

What are we talking about here? Well, one comment on, uh comment on in the in the bridge over from the commercial. I used to have a I had a client internal client for the Wall Street firm that I worked for that would call me. He's a good friend of mine. He ran one of the major divisions of the company. He'd call me up sometimes as a goof early in the morning, like before I had coffee. And he and he I don't want to imitate his accent, so I won't. He would say, hey, Michael, yeah? Did your lawyers go to law school? I said, sorry?

Because if your lawyers go to law school, why do I know more about our contracts than your lawyers? And that would lead to a funny back and forth. But the reality is we did go to law school. We are steeped in the law, and then I've done nothing but for the last 35 years and that's a muscle that gets exercised and it's a skill set. They're not our competition but there are plenty of people on YouTube who are doing commentary and analysis in areas

that are highly technical and highly sophisticated. And it's not amateur hour. And I'm not saying the people that didn't go to law school can't read a case and can't maybe come away with the proper analysis, but it's not gonna be the level of quality that you're gonna get here on Legal AF. And I like that point. Let me go back to ERA.

Very important to me as a person, my mother grew up during the equal rights amendment era. She was a young woman in her mid-30s when the ERA came out in 1972. And the purpose of it was to finally declare, it's hard to believe, so many years after the women's suffrage movement and women got the right to vote that the society felt the need in 1972 coming out of the women's liberation movement and Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug and people that were leaders there, Chisholm, you know, Representative Chisholm, that we needed a constitutional amendment to declare that women had the equal rights in America and that Congress should pass all laws to support that.

The reason it's come back is in 1972 that Congress put a timer on the ERA and the question is whether that timer that it needed to be passed and ratified by two-thirds of the states, which is 38 states, which is 38 states, by within 10 years or 1982, whether that was constitutional. Because by 1982, having passed the Congress, first two-thirds of the vote of the Congress, then it went on a whistle-stop tour around America in different statehouses to be considered. That's how we amend, that's one of the ways we amend our Constitution. Another way is a Constitutional Convention, but we're not going to go there today. By 1982, which was the self-imposed deadline by Congress, but hold that thought, because the argument is they can't impose a deadline. They only had, they were three short,

they had 35 states. But it kept circulating. The reason is this. These kind of amendments kick around for a long time. The concept of the Equal Rights Amendment was proposed a hundred years ago. The concept for limits in our Constitution about how much representatives and senators get paid until it became an amendment kicked around for 200 years. So why would, why is it constitutional since it's not in the constitution that there be a timer? It just says two-thirds of the states must ratify. It doesn't say there's an expiration date. It doesn't say, right? It's not a shelf life. But I think, I think it was done, I haven't looked at the legislative history that carefully yet,

but I will. But I think it was done to create momentum, pardon me, my camera's having a problem, to create momentum and to kind of stampede the states into making fast determinations. It didn't happen. You know, we still have a red state, blue state problem even in 1972. And they got to that five yard line or three yard line, they couldn't punch it through by the 10-year mark. So Kirsten Gillibrand, New York senator She doesn't get a lot of publicity, but she is the junior senator from New York under Schumer with Schumer She's been trying for the last four or five years every which way but loose to get the Equal Rights Amendment Declared to be an amendment to the Constitution. I think it would be the 28th amendment

The first way she tried failed because they didn't have the votes, which was to have the Senate and the House declare that the 10-year limit was ineffective and unconstitutional and didn't apply. Why? Because in 2020, during COVID, Virginia finally ratified becoming the 38th state with an asterisk.

A couple of states had rescinded their support of the ERA, right? But there's nothing in the Constitution that says you can do that. There's no backsees in the Constitution. So her argument was, get rid of the 10-year thing, declare Virginia as the 38th state, and have the National Archivist publish the amendment as passed and as the 28th amendment. That failed. They couldn't get the votes together, got caught up in MAGA and everything like that. She came up with a bunch of constitutional scholars with an ingenious new angle of attack, new analysis, which is the following. Ignore the 10 year limit because it's unconstitutional.

It's not in the constitution. You can't read in things into the constitution. You can either, so she came up with the new analysis, constitutional analysis, it's invalid to have a 10 year statute of limitations on it, if you will, shelf life on it. And that's one, and that no backseats, the people, the states that, to try to F up and stop the Equal Rights Amendment,

states against women's rights, I mean, it shouldn't be any shock. And we can name who they are off the top of our head. They're not allowed to do that either. And then went to President Biden and went to him and recently, which is where we come into your interview, and said here's what she wants, here's what she thinks he's empowered to do as the president, and pitched the following. She pitched that he right now with a stroke of a pen can order the National

Archivist, one of my favorite positions. You and I didn't know any, I didn't even know who the National Archivist was. You and I have spoken more about the National Archivist in four and a half years, five years of legal life than I ever thought I would. But that is the person that's responsible for managing the Constitution and whether an amendment gets added to it or not, and whether it gets literally added to it or not or amended after there's been an amendment process, To order the National Archive is to publish the Equal Rights Amendment, which we'll throw up on the screen. It's only five lines and make it the 28th Amendment. Why does all this matter? It matters because it provides a new bulwark, a new framework, after the Dobbs decision,

taking away a woman's right to choose as a constitutional right, it restores and provides a new launch pad to make the argument that if the Equal Rights Amendment is an amendment to the Constitution, that women have a new ability to declare bodily autonomy and regain bodily autonomy and reproductive rights, including the decision whether to carry a fetus to term or not or at what period, and as a way to try to not only overturn the state bans on it, because this is a new federal constitutional amendment, as equal as any of them. They're not ranked. We don't rank order our amendments. The one is over the two, six is over the ten. No, 28th is as good as the first or the second.

And then use that. That's where this really becomes interesting. Use it as a way to fix what happened with the Dobbs decision and get women back to being first-class citizens in America. That's the two-stepper here that we're watching. First step, get Joe Biden to do it. You interviewed him. You brought it up. What did he say?

President Biden said that he wants to see the ERA become the law of the land. He says that one of the most important things about his legacy is fighting for women's reproductive rights against the onslaught by MAGA. He also says one of the things he wanted to get done and have accomplished by the end of his term is to do anything he can to help women's equality and women's reproductive rights. Why don't I show a clip though just from that interview so people can just get a sense of his demeanor, the types of questions that were being asked. I'll just pick any clip at random.

Salty, just play one of the clips that have been getting a lot of attention if you can. What are you going to do when the other guy that was out there bragging about accomplishments under you, the Medicare $2,000 cap is gonna kick in in 2025, and he's gonna be out there saying, I did this. How's that gonna make you feel when that happens? Look, if it continues to benefit the American... I've invested more in red states than in blue states,

all these programs we just talked about. The reason for that was the red states didn't operate very well, and they really hurt their constituents. So those factories closed and the like. Fact is that I represent all of America, not just Democrats. And I think what's going to do is going to bring the country more together than separate it. And for example,

you already have folks like Marjorie Teller Green and others saying, don't eliminate the factory. After talking about the proposal that we're going to build that, it was the worst idea anybody's ever had. She didn't vote for it. So I think there's going to be a bit of a comeuppance here, but the bottom line is, I'm convinced that over time, the American public will respond to what is the intention of the party to try to help ordinary people. And the fundamental change I made,

and I made a speech at Brookings Institution about it recently, was on the economy. The fact is that we had a long time this idea of trickle-down economics. Let the wealthy do very, very well. They'll have so much money they'll trickle down on people's kitchen tables and coffee tables and like, and everyone will benefit. I've never bought that theory. And so what I've decided to do was to change it to build the company from the middle out and the bottom up. Well, they still do very well,

but the middle class and working class people do much, much better. And that's exactly what's happening. And so I think the long-term prospects for the country are very good. You know, Pope Park, when I was sitting there in the Roosevelt room in the West Wing, I thought I had a few responsibilities. I think first and foremost, I think the responsibility was, frankly, in this historical moment to show who President Biden was, to push back and

be tough, but to be fair and respectful at the same time, I felt a responsibility to the country to do that. I felt a heavy responsibility to the mightest mighty in this community to do my best to make everybody proud because none of that would be possible without this community to do my best to make everybody proud because none of that would be possible without this community. And I know that each and every day. And also I felt a responsibility to independent content creators and people who are entering this space, the OGs who have been in this space for a long time.

Who I have deep respect for, the Brian Tyler Coens, the David Pakmans, you know, Roland Martins. I could go on and name lots of people who have been in this space and all the new people who are entering the space and trying to lead by example. You know, I think it is so important that independent contributors and creators uplift each other and help each other and be supportive of each other and not try to tear each other down and attack each other. That's my motto. And that's what I'm always going to live by here, you know, at the at the Midas Touch Network. to live by here at the Midas Touch Network. And I hope we set an example with all of the newcomers too, right?

Like the Adam Machlors and the Brando's and people who are heading in this space and especially Machlor representing a new generation of content creators as well here at the Midas Touch Network. Now kind of with that as a little bit of prelude, you know, I started getting a bunch of strange emails, Popak, and I'm not going to fully get into the origin of it. But the emails were basically, why have you never covered the 14th amendment section three, and why are you and Popak too scared to do coverage of this? And what's going on? And I'm being told you don't care about the disqualification clause.

And frankly, it upset me as a law professor and someone who takes this job very seriously that that's out there. And I kind of know where it's from, but I'm not going to even get into that. But it is just simply not accurate and not true. Michael Popock, you could probably go through how many hours do you think coverage was devoted to the disqualification clause over the past year? 20.

20 hours, 30 hours, 40 hours. How many videos were spent focusing on the disqualification clause and our view that Trump should be disqualified under the plain text of the Constitution? 30 or 40. 40 videos. How many top experts, professors, including the judges who wrote the amicus briefs, like Judge Luddig, where they don't give interviews anywhere else, pretty much, but spoke here,

and we delved into these issues. I mean, I could show you, go look up Midas Touch 14th Amendment, section three, and you'll see all of the things that we covered. We also covered the fact that, unfortunately, about a year ago, the United States Supreme court made a ruling, a unanimous decision.

This Supreme court made a unanimous decision. This Supreme court can't make unanimous decisions about whether the sky is blue. Okay. But this Supreme court made up of nine right wing and three democratic appointees all came together and for different reasons, but came together and said the disqualification clause of the 14th amendment section three does not apply to the presidency and states like Colorado, which voted to disqualify Donald Trump are not able

to do it, that they should not be allowed. And you may say, well, you're telling me Ben, the Obama appointee and the Biden appointees agreed with that too? They did on different grounds, but ultimately one of their concerns was, if this becomes the precedent that Colorado can disqualify Trump, don't you think in the future Ohio's gonna disqualify the future Democratic person and just make up a pretext to do it? To which you and I argued no actually because it talks about insurrection. So if a Democratic president engages in an

insurrection then yeah they should be worried about being disqualified. But no, Ohio should not make up that you are an insurrectionist when it has nothing to do with the underlying act to disqualify. And we were also very critical that the Supreme Court should have addressed and dealt with the fact that this was an insurrection, which the Supreme Court refused to even get to the fact that this was an insurrection, because if it is an insurrection, then you are disqualified. So the Supreme Court ruled about a year ago in a unanimous decision that there is no disqualification.

So I'm not sure honestly the utility of us saying or providing false hope that a disqualification is a possibility right now. I'm simply not sure Popak that that is you know something that is even something that makes sense. Now, I will, I will throw it to you in that analysis, but I'd love to hear your take because there is a 0% chance because of what the Supreme Court ruled that there can be a disqualification. I disagree with the ruling. So if you want me to make content just telling you again, like I did a year ago, but we covered this at the time and we disagree with the ruling, you know, so, so that's my piece on that. When people have been asking me, why don't you cover it? I mean, we've covered it for hours and hours.

And I get a lot of it too. And I really, I was wondering where it was coming from. I knew there was this thing circulating in the underground that there was outcome determinative fraud in the election, that everything that the Trump said happened to him really happened to Kamala, and that's the reason the numbers are. Which is always odd, because they don't go the next step and say, and all down-ballot votes are also invalid, so all of Congress should not be seated, and all of the senators should not be seated, and the whole thing, we should rerun the election.

I never see that next argument. It's always, no, the fraud was at the presidential top of the ticket level. First time in our entire history that there would be outcome-determinative fraud in all seven battleground states. Okay, so you start from that preposition, which for me is like the moon landing was faked,

and it's really a Hollywood set world. We're in that world, okay. Then you go into the 14th Amendment. And I take it from a slightly different perspective because I'm the one on this network and on Legal AF that's accused of passing out hopium. You know, you joke and others joke with me, oh, there's that popakium again.

So I'm a critical thinker, obviously. People understand, I think, after five years of doing this, how my brain works and the gravitas I bring to my analysis. And we look carefully at it. And it's really for two major reasons that the 14th Amendment doesn't work, or the 12th Amendment, or the 20th Amendment, or any of the sections thereof doesn't work to stop Donald Trump from taking the presidency, being declared the president-elect on the 6th, or taking the presidency and inauguration on the 20th.

It's relatively simple. Big part of it is what happened in the Anderson decision, what we call the Colorado decision, from over the summer. And the other part is the reading of the 14th amendment, the 20th amendment, the 12th amendment, and the rest about the role of Congress in all of this. Because one thing we all agreed on after reading and hearing the per curiam decision

of the United States Supreme Court is, this thing ain't self actuating. You're gonna have to have somebody declare that somebody is an insurrectionist and or take away their quote unquote disability and that somebody is Congress. And the last I looked, Democrats don't have control of Congress and certainly don't have two thirds control of Congress. So you'd think getting nine Supreme Court justices to agree on whether they're having

tuna salad for their weekly luncheon is an impossibility? How about getting 67 senators to agree to bounce Donald Trump from his seat? Now, one of the things I think people enjoy about the show and enjoy about the network and shows like that I'm on that I'm responsible for, including legal AF, is that we say we don't blow smoke or sunshine. That's true. We also don't operate in the world of magical thinking. Magical thinking is temporarily an opium, makes you feel good, makes you feel better. Maybe there's a way instead of addressing the harder issue, which is that 9 million people stayed home. 20 million people didn't vote who were registered to vote. 9 million people that voted for Joe Biden just decided to sit democracy out this time.

That's a brand problem for the Democrats that can be fixed. It's fixable. Just like when Coke came out with new Coke and that was terrible, they got rid of it and went back to old Coke. We can fix this, but it's a brand problem. It's about selling the brand. Just like when Coke came out with new Coke and that was terrible, they got rid of it, went back to old Coke. We can fix this, but it's a brand problem. It's about selling the brand. It's about appealing to people. It's about bringing them together and getting them motivated to vote.

We can do that between now and the time of the midterms. And that is a quality use of our time. Magical thinking is, just to use an old joke that I often use to demonstrate it, magical thinking is I'd love to have a unicorn in my backyard who craps gold bricks, but I'm not getting that either. And so we don't operate in the unicorn and gold bricks mode on this network. Not because it's not interesting, but it's not true. And you and I could devise, like now, a channel and content that would do millions and millions of views if 24-7 we covered something that's

notoriously in the paper right now. And all we did was that channel with those people's faces and just did clickbait thumbnails and clickbait titles, we'd make a fortune. We couldn't live with ourselves. It's not what we created here, but we could calculate our content in a very craven and crass way just to make money. We're not doing that.

So let's get to the 14th Amendment, okay? What we learned from the Anderson decision is states cannot take off the ballot in federal elections, candidates for federal office, including the presidency. States have a big role in the federal election system. That's just not one of them. So they can't do it, which means Congress has to do it. That's why they spend so much time talking not about, in their decision, not about 14th Amendment Section 3, the Insurrection and Disability Clause. They spent a lot of time in the Supreme Court

talking about Section 5, what Congress needs to do, and it's a critical component of their analysis, which means every analysis I'm gonna give you here briefly, the 14th Amendment, the 12th Amendment, the 20th Amendment, all comes back to Congress. And only somebody that that is in magical thinking world thinks that there's a way to get two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate to find that Donald Trump was an insurrectionist on Jan 6 to deny him his seat, quote unquote seat, or his inauguration. This is not happening. I mean, it's not even probable or it's not happening. So, section five says Congress has to create a law that's consistent with what they're trying to resolve has to be symmetrical,

right, proportional to the injury in section three, the insurrectionist event. They're not going to pass that law. Then if you go to the 12th amendment, which is the power of Congress to count and declare the electoral college count, okay, there's no ability in there to do anything related to calling him an insurrectionist and denying him a seat. And the 20th Amendment on inauguration doesn't either. It would have to be Congress creating an impeachment-like event or process or law

that would allow them to do it, but we don't have the numbers to do that. So in order for you to believe and to mislead your public that the 14th Amendment is helpful here, you'd have to take the position that the 14th Amendment is self-actuating. It just stands on its own. A judge can declare it

and the Supreme Court has already shot that argument down. Not happening. And you have to write out of existence the current makeup of the United States Supreme Court, the current makeup of the House and the current makeup of the United States Supreme Court, the current makeup of the House, and the current makeup of the Senate in order for your plan to work. So now I hope people understand why you and I and Karen and others have not been wasting their time talking about this issue.

I assure you if there was outcome-determinative fraud or an ability through the insurrection declaration to take out Donald Trump, every major scholar, including ones who have appeared regularly here, like J. Michael Ludwig and others like Mark Elias and all the other crew and this and that, they would already, I've got a group with me on Legal AF on the YouTube channel, Court Accountability Action. They would be at the front lines making this argument. They're not because they've looked at the data, they've looked at the results, they've looked at the Constitution the way we have, and they've all concluded this is magical thinking and a waste of time. Popak, the group you work with, Court Accountability,

very closely with your channel and which informs a lot of our research. These were the people who were the lawyers who led the Senate Judiciary Committee and who were the top people in these fields. But let's be clear. I want Trump to be disqualified. I would like for the 14th Amendment, Section 3 to disqualify Donald Trump. I would have liked that the United States Supreme Court were nine to zero saying we agree with Colorado's decision and Trump is therefore disqualified and then all of the other states swoop in, they disqualify Trump, he's off the ballot, democracy. Like let's be clear, I would

want that to happen. I thought that the Supreme Court should not overturn the Colorado ruling, which I thought was well thought out. I criticized the Supreme Court for never even addressing that January 6th was an insurrection. They like didn't even use the language insurrection in their questions during oral argument. But the broader point I'm making is that there was, for whatever reason, there was something out there that you haven't addressed this. You say you're fearless and you're supposed to confront

the 14th Amendment, and I'm just trying every day to unite independent content creators to build a medium that is a very difficult thing. There's actual right-wing disinformation out there. There's a lot of people out there on the right wing who are trying to do a lot of harm. And I'll just show you a message I got earlier in the day, Popak, from the Nurses for America,

which says, thanks Midas Touch for lifting up nursing voices for an interview with us all. Since the interview, we've gone, the thousands of signatures that have helped their petition in order to advocate why RFK Jr. is a danger to the nursing profession. Justin Gill, who leads it, sent a message as well. You've uplifted our voices.

Nurses are trusted because we're advocates and we really appreciate your help. And so it's, you know, I'm trying to do everything we can with this platform to give accurate data, accurate legal analysis, uplift the voices of groups like nurses and others every single day. And so it's just, it just kind of comes as a bit of a distraction when all of a sudden it's like you didn't cover something and you're not doing these things. And it's like, I literally did 30 to 40 hours of coverage

on this exact thing at length. I probably agree with what your position is other than there's nothing right now at this point about Disqualification that can happen. Do I think under the Constitution Trump should be disqualified based on my interpretation of the 14th Amendment section 3? Yes, I said the Supreme Court was wrong, but the Supreme Court ruled unanimous. That's over that route isn't a reality right now I'll give you an example One thing it also it also changes the analysis that the vote has already happened. Bouncing him from the ballot so the American people can vote or not vote.

Now that the American people have voted, and again, we could spend hours and hours dissecting what happened on November 5th. You know, books are being written about it. But once the vote happened, the extraordinary step of having Congress deny the winner of the election, the seat, because he's an insurrectionist, to take away and disenfranchise people, that's a whole other thing. And to your point of consistency, which I think people like our show for, I'll use the consistency from your own life. How many times have you and I talked about what the second amendment

about guns says and the language of it? Unfortunately, the United States Supreme Court has disagreed with our good faith analysis that you've done at length. Hundreds of hours we've talked about a well-regulated militia language being written out of the Constitution by the MAGA right wings like Thomas in the Bruin decision in New York, which now says that anybody can carry anything they want anytime they want without limitation. But again, magical thinking, I would just say, why are we using the second amendment

to deny somebody the right to have a handgun in a restaurant? And now we're talking about this, by the way, I sent a note around with you guys recently. We just hit our 340th elementary school or a secondary school death this year in America, in schools, with the most recent shooting. So I'd love to keep holding up the Second Amendment as a barrier to all of that.

But I'd also have to trade in magical thinking that the Supreme Court didn't rule what it did with the decision in Bruin. All we're trying to do here is set an example of promoting, encouraging, uniting people in the pro-democracy movement. And so I would just say this to all of the independent content creators who are kind of stepping into this space.

I would just reiterate the importance of having a unified front, the importance of speaking truthfully, and the importance of recognizing where the real threats are here, and coming up with actionable plans to unite different groups and uplift the groups in pragmatic ways to make a difference. You don't have to agree with that, you can disagree with that,

but that will always be our philosophy here at the Midas Touch Network. And I hope that's the example that I set when we were in the West wing of the White House in the Roosevelt room for that interview with President Biden. And I hope we made you proud Midas Mighty in doing that interview. I want to thank everybody for watching this episode of Legal AF. Make sure you subscribe to Michael Popak's YouTube channel, the Legal AF YouTube channel. Check it out. Also check out patreon.com slash Legal AF and also check out that interview I did with

President Biden. If you can share it with as many family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, and people, you know, as possible. Thank you so much for watching this episode of Legal AF. Have a wonderful day. with as many family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, and people you know as possible. Thank you so much for watching this episode of Legal AF. Have a wonderful day. This holiday season, surprise everyone on your list with the best gifts, tickets to see their favorite artists live.

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