No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - McConnell’s shameless stunt amid Trump’s acquittal

Episode Date: February 14, 2021

Trump’s second impeachment trial concludes and Mitch McConnell pulls a shameless stunt after the acquittal. Brian interviews Al Franken about Trump’s defense lawyers - with Al even doing some character work.Written by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CAhttps://www.briantylercohen.com/podcast/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 the conclusion of Trump's second impeachment trial, a shameless stunt by Mitch McConnell in the wake of Trump's acquittal, and my interview with Al Franken, where we focus on Trump's defense lawyers without even throwing back to the SNL days and doing some character work. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. On the off chance that you haven't heard, Trump's second impeachment trial is over. He was acquitted with what was actually a surprisingly higher number of Republicans joining Democrats

for a final tally of 57 to 43. Those Republicans include Senators Burr, Collins, Cassidy, Murkowski, Romney, Sasse, and Toomey. Now, whether for posterity or if you didn't watch the trial, I do want to reiterate the core elements of the case that the impeachment managers, led by Jamie Raskin, put forward. And those three elements that prove Trump's guilt are this. One, was the violence on January 6th foreseeable? Was it predictable that the crowd at the stop the steel rally was poised for violence if provoked?

and the answer is of course. When Trump went to the podium, he knew that those in attendance were inflamed, that they were armed and were ready for violence. The seeds for that violence were sewn by him with a big lie. This idea that the election was rigged, that Trump was the victim of some massive conspiracy. Trump spread that lie over the course of months

inflaming his base, resulting in death threats and real-world violence. And yet Trump rewarded his supporters who resorted to violence. He rewarded those who encircled a Biden bus in Texas, and ultimately tried to drive them off the road, tweeting, I love Texas. He attacked Georgia's Secretary of State, and when his supporters sent death threats,

Trump attacked Raffisberger further. He validated the threats. It was clear and proven that his supporters would resort to violence and that he supports that. The guy even dumped $50 million in ads targeted to those very people to further promote his Stop the Steel message, those same people who he knew to be violent. Like, the FBI issued a report warning of a quote,

War at the Capitol. If the FBI knew, the President knew. There was no doubt that the risk of violence was foreseeable, and yet still he continued to perpetuate that lie. Two, did he encourage the violence? Standing in that powder keg, did he light a match? Yes. Consider some of the quotes that he offered from January 6th.

There's never been anything like this. It's a pure theft in American history. Everybody knows it. Make no mistake, this election was stolen from you, from me, and from the country. We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn't happen. You don't concede when there's death involved.

And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal. And when the crowd chanted at him, fight for Trump, here's what he said. Thank you. He said thank you. He then quite literally said. sent them to the Capitol. He told them to fight like hell and sent them to Congress. Beyond that, he implied it was okay to break the law because the election was being stolen. He said, quote, when you catch somebody in a fraud, you're allowed to go by very different rules. So it's clear.

He said it and his supporters did it. And we know that because his supporters said they were acting on Trump's behalf. They said, quote, Trump is calling on us to fight. Like in their desperation to show their allegiance to the guy, they just prove the case against him that he was responsible. I mean, Even those in his own party acknowledged that Trump encouraged it. Senators, members of Congress, Republican governors. We had Larry Hogan, Charlie Baker, Chris Christie, Adam Kinsinger, John Katko, Ben Sasse, Mitt Romney. So if you're wondering if he encouraged it, the answer is yes. And finally, the last question, did Trump act willfully in his actions that encouraged violence?

Did he mean to do it? Well, let's see. He stood before an armed, angry crowd known to be ready for violence at his provocation. And what did he do? He provoked them. He aimed them at the Capitol, told them to fight like hell, and they did. And his conduct after that proves that he acted willfully. He tweeted a video during the insurrection.

Quote, we had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it. He tweeted during the insurrection. These are the things and events that happen when an election is stolen from us. So when he had the opportunity to quell the violence, he chose instead to validate their very reason for committing it. Like, consider two, when Trump wants to stop something, he does it easily and quickly. Some errant synapse fires in Donald Trump's brain, some fleeting thought pops into his head.

He will tweet it out in half a second to 88 million people. And yet suddenly, during a five-hour-long attack on the Capitol, he did nothing other than post a few tweets a couple hours in that only reiterated the cause for the riot. He never condemned the attack. He never condemned the attackers. He never said that he was sending help. He reacted exactly as someone would who was delighted, even as a police officer was killed, after his own supporter was killed, after his own vice president faced assassination. Trump's reaction is evidence of his intent. He reacted exactly as he would if he intended for a mob to overtake the Capitol.

And so clearly, the case was a home run. It was beyond dispute and managed to persuade some Republicans who, frankly, I'd have never expected to break ranks. But one of the senators who voted to acquit, unsurprisingly, was Mitch McConnell. And that was, despite having primed his conference to vote their conscience. But here's what McConnell said after the final vote that made me feel like I was living on a different planet. January 6th was a disgrace. American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of domestic business they did not like.

Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the Vice President. They did this because they'd been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on earth. Because he was angry, he lost an election. Former President Trump's actions preceded the riot

for a disgraceful, disgraceful, dereliction of duty. There's no question, none. That President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. The people

who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president. And having that believe was a foreseeable consequence of the growing

crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole, which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth. And this was after the guy just voted to acquit him. Like, if only Mitch McConnell of 10 minutes earlier could have heard Mitch McConnell, he might have voted differently. So that begged the question, what the hell? Well, here's the way McConnell answered that question.

Justice Joseph's story, our nation's first great, constitutional scholar. As he explained nearly 200 years ago, the process of impeachment and conviction is a narrow tool, a narrow tool for a narrow purpose. Story explained this limited tool exists to, quote, secure the state against gross official misdemeanors, end quote. That is, to protect the country from government officers. If President Trump were still in office,

I would have carefully considered whether the House managers proved their specific charge. But in this case, the question is moot because former President Trump is constitutionally not eligible for conviction. That impeachment is a narrow tool to protect the country from government officers and that because Trump is no longer in office, he's no longer eligible for impeachment. But here's the thing, the only reason that Trump wasn't being tried

while he was in office is because of Mitch McConnell himself. He controlled the Senate schedule and he was the one who said that the trial wouldn't begin until Biden took office. In other words, what McConnell is saying here

is yes, Trump is guilty, but the only time he could be tried lawfully in the Senate is precisely when I prevented it. Yeah, no, that makes total sense. Another point here, that is not the only role of impeachers. Like, there's this theory among Republicans that the only purpose of impeachment is to remove current officials from office.

Here's what the literal constitution says. Quote, judgment and cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States. In other words, removal and disqualification from running again. The point is twofold. So while Trump might already be out of office, the point of impeachment is still valid after his term. And so, look, McConnell can lean on these strained legal arguments, but the fact is that because he voted to acquit, he is complicit in the very event that he is so sanctimoniously railing against.

When you fail to hold someone accountable for inciting an insurrection, that's a task of endorsement of it. You don't get to have it both ways. You don't get to say, I'm against it, but I'm also unwilling to hold you responsible for causing it. If he really thought that it was that bad, then why refused to allow the trial until after Trump was out of office? His entire argument is predicated on his own failure to let this trial begin sooner,

considering he was in charge of the schedule of the Senate. And look, I don't know what Mitch McConnell's aim is here, but I can promise you it's political. Mitch McConnell doesn't do anything unless he stands to benefit politically. There's no conscience or integrity or humanity. There is politics, and that's it. So most likely, he may have done it to try and lure some of the donors who've been spooked by Trump back into the party,

basically by saying, Hey, look, I acknowledge how bad this was. Don't worry. The crazy GOP is gone. It's just me, the establishment. But any donors who hear that, within an hour of that very person voting to acquit Trump, should feel insulted, like to say the least. You don't get to distance yourself from the very thing that you just endorsed. McConnell just made his position known.

He doesn't get to have it both ways. So with regard to Trump's acquittal, am I disappointed, of course. Am I surprised? No. But two things are going to happen from here, both of which are critical in terms of never seeing Trump in office again. The first is that he's not even close to being out of the woods legally. He has to deal with the criminal justice system now. He's already being investigated by the Fulton County DA in Georgia for his phone call demanding that Brad Raffisberger fined 11,780 votes. He's in the crosshairs of the D.C. Attorney General for inciting the insurrection,

the New York Attorney General for his corporation. And guess what? Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and the rest of Trump's breathless sick offense don't run those offices. Actual law enforcement officials do. So Trump might seem impervious to consequences in the world of politics, but we're in an entirely different realm here. And two, we focus on Democrats' agenda,

which is popular. We're already seeing progress on major, major legislative wins from DACA to climate change, $15 minimum wage, COVID relief, stimulus checks, vaccine distribution. So our job is to keep giving people a reason to vote for Democrats,

a reason to reject the politics of fear that Trump needs to run on. Like, he promised that a Biden win would mean a tanked economy, lost jobs, mismanaged vaccine distribution, and full-blown socialism. His supporters are about to see firsthand what the rest of us have known all along, that he was always a liar. So whether it's contending with the criminal justice system or Biden's success, Trump's post-presidency life isn't going to be doing him any favors. Next up is my interview with Al Franken.

Okay, we've got a good one today. Right on the heels of the impeachment trial, we've got my friend Al Franken. Al, thanks for coming back on. My pleasure. Right now, you've heard both sides present their arguments. You've heard the impeachment managers and you've heard Trump's lawyers. Do you think they presented a good case? The impeachment managers, I thought that.

Trump's lawyer, I don't think Trump's lawyers tried very hard. I don't think they felt like they had to. I think they were just trying to make Trump happy by being, by sounding like Trump. But I think they felt they just didn't have to do it. They could have gone out there and just mooned the senators and they would have been fine. They were pretty bad. They were pretty ill-prepared.

They did three hours out of the 16 they had. Yeah. And even a good portion of that was the same montage playing on a loop. I think we saw that fight montage three times. I just know it went on a long time. I thought that it would have been more effective. I wrote, texted one of my Republican former colleagues that, you know, it would have been really effective if after each one of those fights,

you had shown footage of the riots that happened after that Democrat said fight. Right. That would have made your point better. The riot that occurred after Elizabeth Warren called for fighting for health care, the riot that occurred after. that occurred after Maxine Waters and after Chuck Schumer. Yeah, well, Chuck Schumer, he gets that a lot. There are riots very often.

Yeah. You know, when inciting this thing, it was an incitement that lasted from really before November 3rd, but certainly starting early in the morning, November 4th, saying it had been stolen. Right. And so it was a long incitement. And they wouldn't have been there unless. they felt those people thought it was stolen and he kept saying it was stolen and there was no basis for that whatsoever the managers made this point which is he lost 61 cases that was the

legitimate way to do it even though those cases were not legitimate in many cases that and the judges and as the managers said that Trump appointed judges yeah basically That wrote pretty scathing opinions, dismissing those. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's true. And it started, you know, Chris Wallace had asked Trump during an interview if you lose the election, will you accept the results? And he refused to answer.

So this was- You refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power. He was sowing the seeds for months prior. This was his plan. He broadcasted on national television, the same thing, Brian Karim from Playboy, asked him in the White House press briefing room, the same question. And yet again, he refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power. So it's not like it was a surprise.

He said there was fraud in the election. He won. Right. Right. You know, he said, I didn't, you know, and he appointed a commission to prove it, the Kobach commission, and they found nothing. And so, yeah, I mean, this. What he does.

So the idea that why were those people there? They were there to stop the steal. Why were they there to stop the steel? Because it had been stolen. Right. That was inciting. It started inciting way ahead of time. And just those words, you know, his manager said,

well, he said peaceful and patriotically. Yeah. Look, you know, the mobsters, you know, sometimes they know they're being taped. So they go like, yeah, it'll be a shame. If Vinny, you know, turns up, you know, dead in a swamp, you know. Okay, Tony, we're going to go take out. Vinny. Well, no, the boss said it'd be a shame. Right. No, that's cover. That's a cover thing. What are you talking

about? No, we're not going to kill Vinny. He'd be ashamed he said. Don't, how long have you been with us? Eight years? You don't know. What he says, it'd be a shame. He means do it. Right. Okay, anyway. No, but it's true. I mean, it's that, it's that stupid. It's pretty stupid. the guy spent the guy spent months in citing this you know laying the seeds germinating letting these seeds germinate to to ultimately do what happened and then spending money to organize this thing and put 50 million 50 million dollars into ads from his election defense fund this thing was a long time in the making and then all of a sudden you point to the fact that oh well he did say walk down to that insurrection but do it peacefully and that absolves

Yeah, peacefully. And I don't, look, these Republicans aren't just afraid of their base. Well, the ironic part about that is that Donald Trump wouldn't even be punished for this. This is just the standard that they're setting. So that's to say, here's what we won't accept moving forward from a Democrat or a Republican, but Trump won't even go to prison for a single day, hour, minute. Not for this. Not for this.

No, no, no, no, not right. Not for this. But the point is that, like, wouldn't you want to establish a precedent knowing that Donald Trump is safe? You're not, you're not doing anything to hurt him. You are, he will still be protected at least as far as this impeachment trial. But I can't run again. Right. But I mean, like, if Joe Biden runs a second term and loses, claims he won for several months to the point where everyone believes it and those people storm the capital, that will be okay based on the precedent that Republicans are setting here?

No, because then they'd vote to convict Biden. Right. Right. no principle here they just are afraid of their base they're Republicans and they think they'll lose the primary to a Republican if they you know vote to convict that's all I mean that's kind of what it is and but he may go to prison for all sorts of things yeah and now I mean part of this case which was the shakedown of the sector of state Raffensberger is hilarious if If that isn't impeachable, I don't know what it is.

I mean, he's basically threatened the guy. The funniest thing to me in this whole thing is asking for 11,780 votes. One single more vote than the amount that he got. Let's say Raffinsberger did that. How would that have played out? Okay. Would it have been like he calls a press conference, right? And it goes like, okay, turns out Trump won.

Trump has won the election. We had some revisions in the totals and he won by one vote. Did you have a recount? No. We found some votes. Yeah. You what?

Yeah, we found. How many votes did you find? 11,780. And they were all for Trump? Yes. It was 11,000. 780 to zero in the boats we found. Where did you find them in a box? Where was the box in a closet? I mean, how does that?

What's he asking the guy to do? Yeah. How stupid is this? How desperate? If you listen to that call, it is just so desperate. Yeah. Because at this point, he knows he's tried almost, everything and the last desperate thing he's going to try is to kill the vice president it seems i mean

that that happened today where uh you saw uh his counsel trump's counsel go like i don't know what happened and tuberville has said that he got a call from the president and he told the president they told Trump that they just pulled Pence out, and he had to go, and he hung up on the president, right? And then soon after that, he texted a text attacking the vice president, knowing that his life was just put in danger. And then that lawyer said, you know, and they have really good relationships. Yeah, yeah, up until he tried to kill him. And then that has a way of ruining, of hurting a relationship.

I've found that sicking a mob of insurrectionists on people even tends to hurt the relationships that I have with people who are otherwise pretty good friends. I mean, that's just what I've found. Yeah, it has severed. So that's what that lawyer is saying at that time. He's going like, they have a really good relationship. Yeah.

There's a mob chanting, hanged my grounds. Right. And people in the White House evidently are saying to them, you got to do something and McCarthy calls him. Chris Christie is going on TV going like, he inside of this. And Chris Christie is, you know, a Trump, second fan. Yeah. It's amazing to watch this. And it's sad, isn't it? To see these senators who don't have the counties that just go like, okay, come on. Let me, let me ask you one more question. And that is that you know a lot of these people. I'm assuming that you might be friends with some of these

Republican senators. Do you think there's any understanding of what kind of a country they're creating here, like where this is allowed? Is there any appreciation of the gravity of how this will fundamentally change our democracy? The capacity to fool yourself that human beings have is pretty strong. You know, I have talked to a few of these guys and tried to talk them out of their positions. And it's been interesting because I've gotten some. kind of acknowledgement that they're doing it for political reasons. Yeah. As if I didn't know, but I mean, you know,

some sort of mission after a long breaking them down to finally. Okay, yes, and I'm not proud of it, but not ashamed enough to actually do the right thing. Yeah. They don't say that part, but that's a subtext, quite inspiring. Yeah, I can imagine. Well, in the meantime, you know, the good news is that, you know, it's not just Trump on trial. It's all of these Republican senators whose legacies will be inextricably linked to their vote in this trial. So, and as of this recording.

You know what? I've said this kind of thing before. I've tweeted that kind of thing before. And overwhelmingly, the response, you know, my people, our people is they don't care. Yeah. You know, that's going to be their legacy. They don't care. I'm like, okay, and it's hard to argue with that, isn't it? It's true.

In the meantime, you know, all you got to do is, I was going to say fight a little harder, but I want to be careful about saying the word fight, because I don't want you and I to end up in some montage. Yeah, I don't want to inside a riot here. I don't know if I could have that on our conscience between the two of us, but, you know, for all intents of purposes, to keep working hard to elect Democrats because this is what you get with the Republican Party. So with that said, Al, thanks so much for.

for taking the time. Yeah, well, keep fighting everybody out there. Yeah. Peacefully. Do it, do it peacefully. You don't know what I'm saying? Yeah, you don't want anyone getting hurt. Yeah, yeah, it'd be peaceful.

You know, peace. All right, Al. Thanks. Talk to you next time. All righty. Thanks again to Al Franken. 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 on 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.