No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - A win for Biden and a final humiliation for Trump

Episode Date: November 8, 2020

Joe Biden has been elected the 46th president of the United States and Donald Trump suffers one final humiliation in his campaign’s effort to undermine the election results. Brian interviews Congressman Jamie Raskin for answers to the questions that everyone’s been asking, like whether the Supreme Court could help Trump stay in office, whether he could pardon himself, and even what happens if he physically refuses to leave the White House.Written by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CAhttps://www.briantylercohen.com/podcast/To donate to our final Senate races in Georgia, go to GASenate.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about what else, but the election of Joe Biden. We'll touch on one final humiliation for Donald Trump in his campaign's efforts to litigate the results away in the courts. And finally, I interview Congressman Jamie Raskin for answers to the questions that everyone's been asking. Like whether the Supreme Court could help Trump stay in office, whether he could pardon himself, and even what happens if he physically refuses to leave the White House. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. It's done. After four years of corruption, of incessant lies of destroying our moral standing in the world, of the outright criminality, it's over.

Joe Biden has won. He'll be the 46 president of the United States, and Donald Trump will leave office as a one-term president. And there is a lot to celebrate, but I think the first thing to do is to thank those of you who volunteered, who donated, who phone banked and texted, who canvassed, who worked the polls and counted votes, who spoke to fan. families and friends and co-workers and neighbors who didn't vote in the last election and got them to show up, who spoke to those who voted for Trump and got them to change their minds. Thank you to everyone who stayed engaged, who stayed informed, who stayed energized when we had every reason in the world to feel discouraged. I think that's the biggest thing, right? Every day we'd be faced with a barrage of news that was just incomprehensibly bad. We watched

as kids got separated from their parents and put in cages. We watched trans-american get expelled from serving in the military of the country that had just rejected them. We watched as they tried to take health care away from 20 million Americans, as they emboldened neo-Nazis, coddled dictators, alienated our friends and allies, polluted the planet at its most vulnerable point, and let a pandemic rip through this country. To be confronted with that, and yet still persevere, still fight, still stay engaged, still maintain hope, that is what made the difference. It would have been easy to just turn it off.

and check out. Instead, we mobilize the biggest turnout in the history of this country, so thank you to everyone for making that happen. And as gratification here, Joe is wasting zero time. On Monday, he's setting up a coronavirus task force. That's, um, this Monday in November 9th, more than two months before he takes office. So if you were wondering what it would be like to have a president that actually takes this deadly contagion that's killed nearly a quarter of a million Americans seriously, this is what it looks like. The task force is going to be co-chaired by former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and former FDA administrator, David Kessler.

And aside from those titles, there is also the fact that they are not Scott Atlas, which is, in my opinion, their top qualification. Aside from that, Biden's already indicated what his first executive orders are going to be. He will rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement. He'll reverse Trump's withdrawal from the World Health Organization. he'll repeal the ban on almost all travel from Muslim majority countries and he'll reinstate DACA,

the program that's allowed dreamers who were brought here into the U.S. illegally as children to remain in the country. And just like that, environmentalists can breathe a little easier. Just like that, people of different faiths can breathe a little easier. Dreamers can breathe a little easier and those Americans desperate to contain this virus

can breathe a little easier. Just like that, in one fell swoop, the lives of so many people will change. Now, as for Donald Trump, he has graciously called Joe Biden to concede the race. I'm sorry, I can't even finish that sentence. He's holed up in the White House tweeting desperately that he won the race and threatening to litigate this thing until hell frees is over. I wish I was kidding.

He has taken to Twitter claiming that when you count only the legal votes, he won the race. His mouthpieces are out there repeating these desperate claims that a slew of illegal ballots drove Biden's victory and that Republican poll watchers were blocked from observing the obvious fraud that was occurring while ballots were being counted in places like Philadelphia. And that culminated into what I think might be the single most humiliating moment in the history of any campaign ever.

And that is that Rudy Giuliani, along with Pam Bondi and Corey Lee Wendowski, a real dream team of legal minds, decided to convene a press conference to challenge the legitimacy of the election. And so a press conference was called at the Four Seasons. But not just any Four Seasons, Four Seasons Total Landscaping. I guarantee you that one of the masterminds behind Trump's desperate legal Hell Mary thought he was setting up a press conference at a high-end hotel

and didn't realize what he actually did was set it up in the alley of a landscaping company located between a crematorium and an adult bookstore that hosts, quote, Dildo Madness Sales. You could not have found a better metaphor for their legal strategy than this low-rent, derelict alleyway. If this was a writer's room, the whole scene would get cut for being too on the nose. Oh, but it gets better, because the race was literally called for Joe Biden during the press conference.

And when Rudy asked which network called it, the reporter said all of them. And then this is the meltdown that followed. Because they don't decide the election. The call for Joe Biden isn't, is it, what was it called by? All the, oh my goodness, all the networks. Wow. All the networks. We have to forget about the law.

Judges don't count. All the networks. all the networks, all the networks thought Biden was going to win by 10%. Gee, what happened? Honestly, who could have guessed that being caught with his hands down his pants by Borat would be the second most embarrassing thing that's happened to Rudy lately? Now, in reality, the entire fraud story is obviously a sham.

You know how you know that this whole issue of a Republican observers supposedly being shut out of the counting process was bullshit? Because when the Trump folks went to court and fell. Philadelphia about this very issue, the judge asked the campaign if representatives of the campaign were already observing the counting process, and the campaign quite literally said yes. And then the case was dismissed, meaning that the campaign's lawyers undermine their own public disinformation strategy. So that's the whole ballgame.

It doesn't get any more open and shut than that. So, so yeah, this press conference was as blatant a sham as you could get. In a way, that dildo shop that they were next to ended up, being the perfect metaphor here. Just a bunch of little-dict tools that really shouldn't be out in public. So why are they doing it? Why won't Trump just acknowledge reality and concede?

Two reasons, I think. The first is this is their last chance to squeeze some money out of their supporters. So they will send out a barrage of emails claiming that the Democrats are trying to steal the election and that this is the biggest fraud in American history and that your weekly donation is the only way they can fight back. Your recurring donation.

But once Trump concedes, the money operation ends. And you might have noticed, the grift is the entire point of this presidency. So God knows they're going to squeeze every last nickel out of their supporters. But the other reason is just ego. Trump knows that he suffered a massive repudiation at the hands of the American people. This wasn't some grand conspiracy against the Republican Party. It was a repudiation of him. His whole conspiracy about rigging the election results

would suggest that we rigged the election to lose seats in the House, to fail to take the Senate, to lose state legislatures. So either we rigged it to purposefully hurt ourselves or it was only Donald Trump who the American people rejected. And that's the part that hurts. That it was him unilaterally who the American people voted against. But because his ego is so fruct. He'll never accept that, so he needs to play, pretend, and do this whole ridiculous

song and dance as if some fraud was perpetuated. It is political theater that serves no purpose other than to protect this very delicate old man. But in reality, he knows the truth, his campaign knows the truth, and they may not say it publicly, but in the words of Donald Trump, it is what it is. So while you breathe a sigh of relief and celebrate the fact that Donald Trump, Trump is now a one-term president, I do want to flag one thing, and that is that this isn't over. We still have two runoff races in Georgia that will likely determine if the Senate will be in

Republican control or if it'll be split 50-50, in which case Kamala Harris as the VP would act as tiebreaker. Those races between Raphael Warnock and Kelly Leffler and David Perdue and John Ossoff happened on January 5th, 2021. The good news is that, as of this recording, Joe Biden is leading in Georgia by 8,000 votes, meaning he's proven that Democrats can not only compete there in Georgia, we can win. And for this upcoming runoff, Trump won't even be on the ballot. Like, to his credit, we know he can turn out his supporters, but not necessarily if they can't

vote for him. All of that is to say that these races are winnable, and they need to be because I cannot stress enough just how important winning here is. The fate of the entire Democratic agenda rests on whether we have control of the Senate, because we've seen firsthand where a Senate led by Mitch McConnell's gotten us, 600 bills languishing on his desk. This is the future of climate change legislation, of voting rights legislation, of protections for women's reproductive rights and LGBT rights, of raising the minimum wage and expanding

the Supreme Court so that all of that legislation can actually stand. All of that hinges on ensuring that Mitch McConnell is not the Senate majority leader. So I know that we're all tired, but I would just say to take all of that energy that you expend it on the presidential race, on every House race, every Senate race, on Florida and Texas and Michigan and Wisconsin and Iowa and Maine and focus it all on Georgia. Think about all of the work you did to get us where we are today. This is to make sure that it wasn't for nothing. This is to make sure that for the first time in years, we're not just fighting against something awful, but fighting for something good. What happens in these races will shape this country for a generation.

So support these candidates, John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, along with Stacey Abrams and her organization Fair Fight and the New Georgia Project and Black Votes Matter and the Georgia Democratic Party. Be ready to help register new voters between now and December 7th to volunteer and phone bank and knock on doors and do whatever is necessary because we are so close and we've worked so hard. So now let's bring it home. Next up is my interview with Congressman Jamie Raskin, where he answers all of us. our most burning questions, from Trump using the Supreme Court to try and steal the election, to his ability to pardon his friends and even himself. And finally, what happens if he refuses to leave the White House? Okay, so today I'm joined by Congressman Jamie Raskin, who just won his race. So congratulations on your reelection. Thank you, Brian. So you were the only

person I wanted to speak to as a constitutional law professor, a former constitutional law professor, because there are a lot of questions. Now that Joe Biden has won his race, what levers Donald Trump has at his disposal? Because if there's one thing we know about the guy, it's that he's not into losing or humility. So the first question, I think, is the scariest. And that is, can you speak about this idea of faithless electors and whether electors can disregard the will of a state's voters? Ah, well, a faithless elector is one who, votes outside of the instruction of the person they're pledged to vote for. And there have been cases of faithless electors a couple dozen over American history.

But it's extremely unusual and it's extremely unlikely in this election because the candidates choose their own electors. In other words, in Maryland, the Democratic slate of electors has been chosen by the Democratic party. It's been vetted by the Biden campaign and the same has taken place with the Republicans and the Trump campaign. So that's not a worry anybody should have. So is it basically that there is a slate of Democratic electors and the state of Republican electors? And once the state's citizens have cast their votes, only those people from the party that they've cast their votes for is able to actually choose the person that they're, you know, selecting as president. When you go to vote for Biden

or Trump, you're actually voting for the electors that have been assigned to Trump or to Biden for your state. And so when Biden wins in Maryland, those electors will be certified as the winners to participate in the electoral college when it meets on December the 14th. And then they will be, their votes will be sent to Washington and cast when we're in a joint session of Congress on January the sex. So the faithless electors, the many things you might worry about is not something that should be high upon the list. Okay. And that's good to know because we do have a bunch of Trump mouthpieces. I think we have Mark Levin on Fox News that's demanding that the legislatures basically disregard the will of the American people. Is that along the same lines?

Well, okay, that's a different problem. Okay. And there, I mean, that would be a truly extraordinary thing to do, but we know that there are Republicans that have been kicking this around. What they would do is falsely cry chaos, corruption, and fraud in a particular state, say, Pennsylvania or Georgia, Arizona, or whatever might be, and then get a Republican-controlled legislature to overturn the popular result, essentially nullify the election and repeal the existing state election law. They would then, and that quickly, hastily scrambled to pass a new election law and under that law, appoint presidential electors for Trump or split them between Trump and Biden.

I mean, in other words, their goal here would either be to get Trump to win or to get some kind of 269 to 269 tie, throwing it into the House of Representatives for a contingent election. Right. And I know we had spoken last time and you actually pointed out and taught me and a lot of people that it's when the election goes back to the House, it's not, okay, well, Democrats control the House. It's actually the House with regard to state legislatures. And Republicans have a majority in those state legislatures. If there were to be a contingent election in the House, we would not vote. You're right, one member one vote, but we would vote one state one vote, one state delegation. So the California delegation, those 53 people would have one vote. for president. And the one person in Montana would have one vote for president. So there are 50 votes entire in the House. And so that would be the new electoral terrain. And so obviously the likelihood of something like this situation that you just mapped out in Pennsylvania happening at the behest of Trump's mouthpieces is extremely unlikely. Well, Pennsylvania has pretty much gone away because

yesterday the Republican majority leader of the state Senate issued a statement saying that there would be no attempt to repeal the existing election law and to overturn the popular result in Pennsylvania. And he wrote an op-ed to that effect as well. So I think Pennsylvania is not promising for them. Right. And, you know, there are some other states where they could try it, but again, it's only effective if that state's electoral package would make the difference. So they could do it in Arizona, but if we've won in Pennsylvania and Georgia, it would be irrelevant to the ultimate count. Yeah. And then by the way, the fact that we even have to talk about this is just a testament to how far the Republican Party under Trump has fallen, especially with regard to,

you know, how these constitutionalists value our democracy. Yeah, I mean, it demonstrates tremendous disrespect for democracy and our essential constitutional norms. But we do, we will have to replace the electoral college sooner rather than later because, you know, essentially to more or less extent, every presidential election this century, beginning with 2000 in Bush versus Gore all the way up through this one in 2020, has involved a lot of electoral college drama for no reason. You know, Biden's going to end up with somewhere between five and six million more votes than Trump. Why don't we just elect the president the way we elect the governor, senator, mayor, congressperson? Well, that's coming from someone who values

democracy. And I think we only have about half of those in Washington right now who are on the same track as you. So I do want to talk about the Supreme Court. Now, from the beginning we've heard, and Trump's broadcast us on numerous occasions, that his goal here is to have installed Amy Coney Barrett onto the Supreme Court, to have a 6-3 conservative court, to try to win the election that way. So are there roots for Trump to challenge election results in the Supreme Court? No, not at all. I mean, you know, the comical thing is that the country now understands this. You know, when Trump went out on election night and began raving like a lunatic about how he'd won the race and it and it was all fraud and everything, what was amazing to me was

how little anybody was moved by that outside of Fox News. And even there, people understood it was essentially fraudulent. So people understand the president doesn't have any role in it. The states do the counting. They have a state electoral system and apparatus set up with the Secretary of State and the boards of election. And then all of the electors made. And then the electoral college votes are sent to Congress in a joint session. And there's a whole procedure set forth in the Electoral Count Act of 1887 governing the receipt and the counting of electoral college votes. And if worse comes to worse, comes to worse, it goes to the House of Representatives. It's got nothing to do with the president. So, I mean, he was basically like, you know, a guy you see

out yelling in the street at 2 o'clock in the morning. Right. I mean, it was irrelevant. Yeah. And by the way, like keeping on that same track of these court cases that we've seen, again, we've been so worried about litigation, Trump presenting litigation and that being some avenue for him to steal an election. But the litigation that we've seen so far in Georgia was, was over this issue of 53 ballots that they said came in late. And the judge dismissed that case. In Michigan, it was that the Trump campaign wanted self-ordained poll observers to come in. And the judge literally said, do you have people representing your campaign already in that room?

And the campaign said, yeah. And then the judge said, what are we here for? And so that case was dismissed. In Philadelphia, there was another case with the same deal. They wanted poll observers to come in. That was dismissed. So, I mean, it goes to show that all this hype about Trump using the courts, as an avenue to kind of circumvent the will of the American people has dramatically fallen on

its face. The complete incompetence of the Trump team is what saves us from the malice and the evil of the Trump team. Because they clearly would like to bring it down, but rather than picking their shot the way that the clever Republican lawyers did in 2000 in Bush v. Gore and zeroing in on one intrinsically ambiguous thing, which is, are the counties using the same standards, which of course they're not. That's the basis of the whole system. But they exploited that. And then some pictures of people holding ballots up to the light to create the sense that something was going off. In any event, if there was a problem, it should have contaminated the whole election. But they used it to say, well, we'll leave well enough alone and just say, no more counting

going forward. That was phoning itself. But the Republican lawyers were clever then because they zeroed it in one thing. What you got from Donald Trump and his people is just the kitchen sink in, you know, a bunch of states and a bunch of different weak claims. And so they just begin to undermine each other over and over. And at this point, nobody's listening to them. Right. You know, he's the president who cried fraud. Yeah, yeah, starting on, on before he even took office. I mean, the issue with the president claiming illegitimate votes in an election that he literally won, You know, is that when he wants to cry fraud in this election, it's like, you've been, you know, we've heard this song and dance for, for the last four years and it doesn't, it doesn't move

anybody anymore. I do want to talk about, and this is a question I get a lot. It's about the issue of pardons. So I want to clarify, for Trump to issue pardons, doesn't someone need to have been charged with something first? That's legally ambiguous, so whether or not you could just give a blanket pardon going forward. We don't have a case on that. Let's say, somebody like Lewis DeJoy, for example, he hasn't been charged with anything, but there's clearly legal exposure, given everything that's going on. So without Lewis DeJoy having been indicted with maybe without an investigation having even been opened, would it be possible for Trump to preemptively protect him? Well, when you ask whether it's possible for Trump to do something, you know the answer

that. Trump will do whatever he wants. So he will certainly write out a piece of paper that says he pardons Lewis DeJoy presently and forever hereafter for anything he might have done. Hereby. That's a federal offense. Right. And everybody knows it doesn't work for state criminal prosecution. The question is whether a prospective pardon for offenses that have not been charged yet would be a get out of jail free card going in. I mean, this standard understanding is absolutely not because then that essentially tells somebody you can commit whatever crimes you want.

Right. But we just, I mean, it's so extreme. We don't have a case on that. Okay. Another question that I get a lot is on a self-pardon. So would Trump be able to pardon himself? So if investigations are ongoing, would a self-pardon? I mean, it's along the same lines as what you just said. But could that preclude him from facing accountability? So, yeah, again, there's nothing to, you know, keep him from printing out a piece of paper where he says, I hereby pardon myself for any crimes charged or as yet uncharged committed as president within the federal system.

You know, there's obviously, there's been a, there's a scholarly dispute about that and there's been recently a partisan dispute about it. The Democrats say, because we had a hearing about this in the Judiciary Committee, that it's absolutely absurd. You can't pardon yourself. That defeats the whole idea of what a pardon is. And it's not happened. it should not be recognized. The Republicans are essentially advancing the idea that there is no limitation on the pardon power. We know that that's not right. I mean, for one thing, there's a limitation on the ability of the president to pardon people in the state system. But there's also the idea that the president could not go on eBay and say, I'm passing out

pardons for $100,000 a pop. That would be bribery. And so not only could be prosecuted for that, I think that any pardon issued in that fashion would be considered null and void. Okay. I do want to speak about the Senate. Now, as far as we know, and as of this recording, it looks like the Senate, even if we aren't able to take the races in Alaska and North Carolina, that we still have the opportunity to take two seats in Georgia, and obviously Georgia in recount territory now, but that Senate race, those two Senate races, John Ossoff and Reverend Mornock, are going to a runoff on January 5th.

Now, if we don't take the Senate, what legislatively would be off the table? Almost everything. And so what are we able to accomplish? Well, I mean, I think that there's been enough heat put on Mitch McConnell that we will get another relief package. It's going to be like pulling teeth to make it meaningful for the American people and to get the states and the counties and the schools, the aid that they need to get unemployed people, the aid that they need. and we want to make it retroactive and, you know, go back to all of these months that people haven't been earning anything. So we're going to have a huge debate on our public philosophy, but there are a number of

special interest giveaways and grab bags that I know he's interested in. So we're going to deal with that. But look, remember McConnell was the guy who said when President Obama was being sworn in, his major goal was to prevent Obama from making anything happen. from allowing anything to happen. And then under Trump, he was very willing to do nothing other than sit there and pack the courts with hundreds of Trump judges. Right. So legislatively speaking, if we're in a situation where we only have the House, I know that basically it's anything that has to do with the budget. And if I'm not mistaken,

the ACA was passed as a budgetary issue. So what basically would our agenda, to be limited to in the House? Well, remember, we've got 600 bills that are sitting on Mitch McConnell's desk right now, including HRA, which is the universal background check on all violent criminals for the sale of firearms. H.R. 1, which abolishes gerrymandering and institutes nonpartisan independent redistricting panels in every state, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, to end all of the tactics of voter suppression and throwing people off the roles and so on. on. All of those things are sitting on McConnell's desk. We will pass them again and see if we can negotiate to get them to do some stuff. But I mean, you know, with Mitch McConnell, you are

dealing with one of the great obstructionists of all time. I mean, he likes to call himself the grim reaper. Right. Because he presides over a legislative graveyard. Yeah. I think that should just go to underscore the importance as we approach these these runoffs in Georgia, just how important it is, you know, from everything from climate change legislation to voting rights legislation, HR1, to make election day a holiday to stop these voter suppression efforts and stop foreign interference all the way to, you know, making sure that we protect health care in this country to protect a woman's right to choose what she does with her own body. So all of that stuff is on the line. So, you know, that just kind of underscores just how

important these Senate races in January really are. Yeah, Georgia is the whole thing. And, you know, that will be a battle royale for the future of democracy and our ability to get any legislation passed over the next two years. And we're going to have to put it on those terms to make people understand. That's what it's about. I woke up this morning with Georgia on my mind. And so I played it and I sent it to my Georgia colleagues to thank them for everything they've been doing to rescue American democracy. Yeah. Yeah.

And we see over and over again, too. I mean, a lot of these, the difference in this election was these votes. coming out of Savannah and Atlanta. It's mostly people of color. So yet again, people of color have come to the rescue and saved us from what has been the worst authoritarian episode in American history. So that's something to remember. I do have one last question. This is something that I get frequently too. And that is that in the event that Trump doesn't physically leave and just keeps claiming a rigged election, who specifically is charged with removing the guy? Well, that's an awesome question. and I know that's given people nightmares,

but that's one that doesn't bother me so much because that's what the Secret Service is for. That's what the U.S. Marshals are for. The police power is going to belong to Joe Biden. Yeah. And the executive branch of government. And there's a lot of police officers around the president of the United States.

So, you know, if he wanted to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the White House, like, you know, a squad or someplace, I suppose he could. It would be the ultimate humiliation and embarrassment at that point. But, you know, we're very clear that if he really wanted to try to perpetrate a military coup, he shouldn't have started by insulting everybody in the military and everybody who's ever served in the military as being a fool and a sucker. So he hasn't much set the grounds for a successful military crew.

Yeah, that's a great point. Well, Congressman, thank you so much for taking the time to talk. It is always, you know, fascinating to hear from you. So I hope we can have you back soon. Pleasure's all my, Brian. Stay close, man. Thanks again to Jamie Raskin. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera, and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe in your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review.

And check out Brian Tyler Cohen.com for links to all of my other channels.