No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Supreme Court decision rocks Trump's prosecution

Episode Date: March 3, 2024

The Supreme Court grants Trump the delay he's been seeking in the immunity case. Brian interviews former Obama speechwriter and Pod Save America host Jon Favreau about how our strategy should change given the Supreme Court’s decision, the warning signs for Trump in the Republican primary contests, and what to look for as we await Biden's State of the Union address.Buy Democracy Or Else: https://crooked.com/booksShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee 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 fallout from the Supreme Court decision granting Trump his delay in the immunity case, and I interview Pod Save America's John Favreau about how our strategy should change given the Supreme Court's decision, the warning signs for Trump in the Republican primary contests, and what to look out for as we await the State of the Union address. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. You know by now that our far-right Supreme Court has just decided to grant Trump the delay he so desperately wanted in the D.C. prosecution by agreeing to review this incident. insane notion that a president has complete and total immunity to commit crimes while in office, which at the end of the day, even this Supreme Court won't uphold. And so I want to be clear about what the implications are for Trump and how we should react to this. So first,

the implications for Trump are pretty simple. Because the Supreme Court agreed to hear this case at the end of April, Trump now gets a nice long delay and virtual assurance that he won't be convicted before the 2024 election. End of April hearing means we likely won't get a decision for at least a month, which puts us into June, assuming the court rules that he doesn't have immunity, then Judge Chutkin already assured him that he'll get three months to prepare, so that's September, then four to six weeks for a trial, plus jury deliberations, plus sentencing, puts us after the 2024 before election. All thanks to a court that is purportedly there to defend the Constitution, not help a despot set it on fire. And yet, here we are. So Trump wanted a delay.

He got the delay, thanks, I'm sure, to Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito and these other right-wing hacks on the court, which brings me to the second point. And this is the more important point, because this is what we can actually control. So I know it's impossible not to see what's happening here and to feel completely disillusioned. Like, this guy incites an insurrection in fucking January of 2021. And somehow, it's March of 2024 and he's still gallivanting around the country and not sitting in a jail cell. Like, this goes without saying, but if a black dude on the corner did one one thousandth of what Donald Trump did, we all know where he would be. And so I get the feeling of hopelessness that you might feel, like the feeling of exhaustion and

powerlessness and futility, I get it. But you throwing your hands in the air and giving up is exactly what Donald Trump wants. He wants you to feel like you have no power and that your voice doesn't matter and that your participation doesn't matter because he's already won. That's what he wants. There would be nothing in the world that he would benefit more from. And so not only would he get the delay that he's seeking, not only would he score that win, but he'd also be rewarded by you checking out. It's a double win for him. And so we can't. reward his corruption by also giving him a clear runway to keep barreling forward. The answer here, the only answer, is to keep fighting and, in fact, to let this inspire you

to fight harder, because I promise you, this will all seem tame compared to a Trump presidency, and we'll all wish that we could have done more when we actually had the chance, which is right now. And keep in mind, too, if you're feeling discouraged by this Supreme Court thing, by the polling, by just politics in general, all that matters are the votes. And in election after election, the Democrats are winning. That is what matters. We've won out in every election since 2018, and most recently we've won even in states like Kentucky in Ohio and Virginia.

So don't be swayed by a media that wants nothing more than to ramp up the drama to keep you hooked. And look, would it be nice for the courts in this country to like meet the moment? Absolutely. But let's be clear. Our strategy here was never, never to just sit back and allow the courts to take care of it for us. Our strategy was always to do the work and focus on our circles of people and make sure that everyone is informed and engaged. And that doesn't change at all because of the Supreme Court decision.

Again, it would be nice if they did their job, but we still have to do ours. So if you're upset, don't let it stop you. Let it push you even more to keep going. Next up is my interview with John Favreau. I'm joined now in his own studio by John Favro, President Obama's speechwriter, and the co-host of POTSafe America. John, thanks for taking the time. Thanks for having me.

I didn't even have to go anywhere. Yeah, that's right. easy for you. So let's talk about the Supreme Court because this is obviously a big piece of news with the Supreme Court granting Donald Trump the gift of the delay that he was seeking with this immunity case, pushing this thing all the way back to arguments aren't going to begin until April 22nd now. Does that change our strategy? It shouldn't change our strategy because while I'd seen the same polls everyone else has, if you ask people, would you vote for Donald Trump if he was convicted of a felony,

lose a bunch more Republicans, lose more independence, as one would hope. Not enough Republicans in independents, but you do lose a bunch of them. And in a lot of those surveys, it goes from either tie race or a small Trump lead to a Biden victory. So that sucks. But I don't, I think it only, at the end of the day, it's going to take voters going to the polls and like the most important jury is going to be the American people. That was always going to be the case. Because even if the trial happened on time, even if it happens before the election, there's always a chance that what people are telling pollsters doesn't actually happen, and that Republicans now are telling pollsters, oh, yeah, if he's convicted, I won't vote for him, and then they'll just cut two. Yeah, and they change their minds, or there's also a possibility that something goes wrong with the trial, there's a possibility that he's acquitted, right?

We don't know. And then, so we can't, we shouldn't ever have based our strategy on the fact that Donald Trump will be convicted. before the election, I do think it sharpens the argument that Donald Trump is not running for president for the country to help people. He is running for his own selfish gain, which he was before, but now it's more magnified because Donald Trump is not running for president. He is like running from prison. He is running from the law. He is running just for his own freedom. And if everyone knows that the American people know that if a Donald Trump win puts him in the White House and he'll never be accountable for anything.

A Donald Trump loss means that he will at least face a jury of his peers. Right. And that's a good point because I know a lot of people can see this and become disillusioned with the whole process and say, like, what's the point he's always going to get away with it? But the fact is that if Joe Biden does win, then these prosecutions will move forward fine. The only way that these prosecutions would actually be in jeopardy is if Donald Trump becomes president and he can try to use his own DOJ to withdraw their own prosecutions of him. So I think that that's a great point. And also your point about the fact that it was never on the courts to save us.

It was never on lawyers or lawmakers or state parties or anyone. This whole thing was always going to be about us in the end. I know it's like we want not to have to do all the work that we're going to have to do. We want to be let off the hook somehow. It's just not going to happen. We're going to have to grind it out. Now, Joe Biden has been cautious about mentioning these prosecutions. because Trump and Republicans are already claiming that Joe Biden has something to do with it,

which, of course, he doesn't, but that's not going to change the talking points. So given that Trump was indeed handed this gift by the Supreme Court, do you think that Joe Biden should then lean in now that he doesn't have to, that he doesn't have that benefit anymore? No matter what, he still can't talk about a case that is being tried by his own Justice Department. I just think it gets into pretty tricky territory, legally, institutionally, but I don't think he needs to. Joe Biden has talked a lot in speeches and interviews about what Donald Trump did in January 6th, about the fact that Donald Trump has, you know, mishandled classified information. He's talked about all this stuff before.

So he can continue to talk about why Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, remind people what Donald Trump did. when he left office, remind him that he, remind people that he tried to attempt a coup, all things that Joe Biden has said before. He can keep saying those things. You don't need to actually talk about the legal process. I don't think it gets him anything else. I don't know what would affect voters differently if Joe Biden started talking about, oh, well, the Supreme Court did this and, you know, Donald Trump should be on trial. That's not much different than, hey, remember Donald Trump tried to steal the last election and then stay in power and sent a violent mob to Congress? You can say that. I think the crime that led to these prosecutions is probably more front of mind and more important for these voters than the legal processes that determine what his punishment is going to be. Absolutely.

And also, everyone's following the legal process, right? They're getting coverage. And Trump's talking about it. So, like, I don't know if Joe Biden needs to talk about it. Yeah. So I want to go over to a slightly different issue, and that is the issue of the Republican primary writ large. We're now through four Republican primaries. Donald Trump failed to consolidate full support in all of them. He got 51%, 54%, 60, and then 68. So how much of a blinking red light is this for him? Because like Joe Biden, he's running as the incumbent. And Joe Biden has the advantage of getting 96% support, or in this most recent one, 81% support. So these are, you know, this is an apples to apples comparison, because both guys are running as the respective party's incumbents. But one of them is getting far less numbers than the other.

Yeah, we don't know. And like you said, because we are in an unprecedented situation where two presidents are in a rematch. Yeah. So we haven't had. We, you know, it's hard to sort of compare to the past. But I can remember in 2008 when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had a very long primary. And it was pretty clear in the late winter, early spring, that Barack Obama had sewn up the nomination. But Hillary Clinton stayed in the race until June. And we got our asses handed to us in a lot of those primaries. And everyone kept saying, well, Barack Obama couldn't consolidate the party. And he's going to have big problems in the general. And they would interview Clinton voters. And like half of Clinton's voters said that they wouldn't vote for Barack Obama in the general, which did not happen. So that that's only to say that it's not a guarantee that just because someone voted for Nikki Haley in the primary, they won't vote for Donald Trump in the general.

But what I think Nikki Haley has done for the Democrats and for Joe Biden is to like sort of leave a trail of. breadcrums of voters that Democrats can target with persuasion efforts because now we're going to know every voter that voted for Nikki Haley in all of these swing states, we're going to know where they live, demographics, and Democrats are going to be able to make their case to those voters and spend more resources targeting those voters than we would otherwise if she hadn't run. And I do think for some of the, if you believe a lot of these polls and a lot of these exit polls, a lot of these voters that are voted for Nikki Haley are saying things like Donald Trump is not fit for office. They believe that they don't believe in the big lie. They believe that

Joe Biden won the election. Some of them are saying that if he's convicted, they're not going to vote for him. And a lot of them are saying that, yes, they voted for Nikki Haley, but we will not vote for Donald Trump and the general. Right. So that's a non-insignificant portion of Haley's voters have said this to exit poll. It's had this in exit polls. So, you know, I think it's a good thing for Democrats. And but, you know, we won't know until the fall. But I think that's where a big chunk of the persuasion efforts should go. But also, this isn't some insignificant portion of her voters. This isn't like 2% of Haley voters.

This is like 40% of her voters. There was as much as 82% of her voters in the most recent race who said that if Donald Trump was convicted of a crime, he would be unfit to be president. These are not small numbers. Even if Haley has a quarter of the Republican electorate, of true Republicans, that is still like half of that quarter is not a small amount, especially in a race

where Donald Trump's only goal right now, is to expand his coalition, is to expand his 10. I mean, he lost Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania, by small margins in 2020. His job right now is to be reaching out to independence and suburban moms and young people and people of color. And, like, if he's got massive defections from within his own base, that ain't it. Yeah, one way to think about it in Michigan is 100,000 protest votes against Joe Biden in a state that he won by 150,000 votes.

Donald Trump, basically 300,000 protest votes against Donald Trump. Trump in a state he lost by 150,000 votes. So he already needs 150,000 votes just to get even in Michigan, right? And now, in addition to the 150 he was down from 2020, another 300,000 voted for Haley instead of him, right? So that's part of the math. And how much, how much misplaced optimism do you have in, with regard to Nikki Haley endorsing Trump or endorsing Biden at the end of this? I think there's a 0% chance she endorses Joe Biden. I think there is a, I'm at like... Well, I guess the real question should be,

does she endorse Donald Trump, or does she endorse nobody? Right. So I'm at, like, a 20, 30% chance she endorses nobody. But I think it's, I think she ends up getting behind Trump. But again, I would make the case to her that, like, even for her own political future, that, like, she should not endorse anyone. Well, do you think that she's past the point of no return? I mean, now she is the only person standing in between Donald Trump launching his, like a full-scale campaign against Joe Biden.

Definitely passed the point in return, which is why I would say, then what are you doing? What are you doing? Right? Because if she, so let's go down the path. She endorses Donald Trump and then Donald Trump loses, right? Then she is not the future of the party because she endorsed Donald Trump. She's part of it. Someone else is going to come along and say, you know what, this whole Trump thing, this cost us.

Just throw them out of the window. Now, say she endorses Donald Trump, Donald Trump. Donald Trump wins. He's not going to forget. He holds a grudge. She's out. She's out no matter what. So there's no benefit to endorsing him.

There's no future for Nikki Haley in a Trump-led Republican Party. There's just not. And I think she knows that. So she knows that. Then stepping back, right, she's going to get a lot of shit from the Trump people. She's going to be exiled from the Republican Party. She's going to have no future. But if Donald Trump loses and Joe Biden wins and she didn't endorse Donald Trump,

then she can say, I still think she doesn't get a nomination because I think the party's too Trumpy, the base of the party. But at least she has an argument in 2028, which is I told you so. I told all of you that this was going to happen. Yeah. I want to move over to IVF because this is a big issue. I feel like this is the first moment where Republicans seem to be on the defensive to such a degree since Dobbs. Does that kind of portend how potent of an issue this is going to be for Democrats moving forward? I think it should be.

I think we should. I mean, can you square the? for me because the Republicans are out there claiming that they want to do anything they can to promote like building families. This is for a lot of people in this country the only way they can actually do that. So this goes so far beyond, I mean, it gives the game away in terms of the fact that like it was not really just about Roe. That was a big part of it for them. But I mean, now they're attacking every facet of reproductive health. So I think there's a segment of the right that just doesn't believe in IVF, right?

there is another segment of the Republican Party and Republican politicians I'm talking about here because most most Republican voters are in favor of IVF yeah but there's a bunch of Republican politicians who are like well I am in favor of IVF right because it helps people get fail helps people grow their families but they've also signed on to like fetal personhood right legislation which is the same basis same basis yeah and so when you ask those same you're gonna you're getting answers from Republican politicians that are like I support IVF well are you okay with embryos being discarded, right?

Which is the only way you can do IVF, right? That happens all the time. They say, oh, no, I don't want an embryo being discarded because an embryo is a... So you're not okay with IVF, right? And so it's either ignorance of science, it's either just lying, whatever it is. I'm not going to guess the motivation. But either way, I think all that matters for Democrats is Tammy Duckworth had a bill. You know what?

You say you're for IVF. This bill will protect IVF, right? on a federal level, so we don't have to worry about what happens in Alabama, we don't have to worry what happens in the next state, we don't have to worry about what courts do. This bill will protect IVF. They blocked the bill. And in addition, a whole bunch of Republicans in the House signed on to a fetal personhood bill that would also render IVF, you know, that would also prevent IVF nationally. So, like, that's it. That's how they voted. State of the Union is this week. You obviously have a lot of success with this. So first off,

I want to talk about what does success and what does failure look like for Joe Biden as far as the State of the Union address goes? I think success is that he lays out an agenda for a second term that people walk away with some general knowledge of, that it acts as a blueprint for his campaign that he's about to run. And so, and that he lays out a contrast with the other side. And I say the other side and not Trump, because obviously it's not a political, it's not a campaign. campaign speech, so he's not going to mention Trump a bunch. But we saw it in 2012, when Barack Obama was running for re-election and did the state of the union, we saw that as like, okay, this is our chance. The biggest audience we're going to have all year. It's probably, it's like slightly bigger even than your convention speech audience. Yeah. Not as big as the debates, but who knows what the debates this time? We're not, we're probably not going to have debates. So could be Joe Biden's biggest audience from now until November. And so you have that many people tuning in. And what you have to think about. is forget about the Yahoo's in Congress. You are talking to the American people, and so you have to make your case as to why you should be president for another four years and why the opposition

is not the people that you want to be putting back in power. And that's it. Like, if you can do that, then that's a success. To what degree is the inevitability of someone like Marjorie Taylor Green interrupting that, which has become like a feature of these speeches? Is that going to be part of the prep for the address? Yeah, it's definitely part of the prep because, I mean, I think ever since Joe Wilson screamed you lied to Barack Obama during the joint session for health care. They've all been prepared for it. Obama has been prepared for it. Biden has gone back and forth to Republicans as recently as last year. So, and I, well, honestly, I think it's almost always a good thing for him because it definitely helps last year. If you're standing up, and this goes for whoever the president is, if you're standing up shouting at someone giving a speech, no one thinks that's cool. voters don't like that maybe like political people on your side like that voters don't like that they don't want people being

interrupted they think that's that's rude what is the worst memory you have from writing a state of the union speech all of them all the memories i can't even remember uh i can't remember which speech was which memory but like it's just it's a brutal process i remember you are up till

three in the morning two weeks in a row seven days a week just constant edits from every department, every federal agency, the edits just keep coming in. And then the president, he's giving his edits while policy people are doing their edits and they're fact checking. And the whole time, you were just trying to cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, because the speech just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And all I wanted to do was just keeping under an hour and have some kind of a message and some good moments that people would remember. And just making sure

that happens is like the biggest struggle. What was the most insane thing that somebody had requested that you put into the state of the unions because everybody gets their moment like this is where everybody kind of converges on you and wants to have there a few seconds um i would ignore most people who would try to get something in because if like the president didn't want it then i'm not going to like put it in the speech i i used to say in the white house the president is not your pa system like some people thought that like speeches that Barack Obama gave were an opportunity for him to make an announcement that could be made via press release but they just wanted him to make it because it was a bigger megaphone so like that's not what we do but there was a moment where

Bill Daly was the chief of staff and he had been Commerce Secretary in the Clinton White House and we were talking about government reorganization really exciting part of the speech so Lovett and I thought we'd make a joke in that section

and we found out from Bill Daley that the Interior Department monitors salmon when they're freshwater and the Commerce Department monitor salmon when they're in seawater and Obama said why do we need this and by the way

it gets even more complicated once they're smoked not that funny but anyway right before the speech Gary Locke the Commerce Secretary called me up and was like this is not true commerce is supposed to have this kind of salmon and an interior is supposed to be doing that and it's not an example of things that need to be reorganized

it's fine the way it is and this is going to be a big problem and then Bill Daly's like no you're right you can keep it in the speech and they're arguing it's like a half hour before the speech and we're arguing about fucking salmon and I put it in the speech anyway and then they did like a polls after the speech and they did like the word class

thing. And, like, you know, in that word cloud, you want the biggest word to be like, jobs, economy, middle class. And the math speech was salmon. Salmon was the biggest word. So that was a mess. That was a miss. All right. Let's finish off with that with this. So we're both in California right now. Obviously, we have the California Senate race coming up. Now, according to the latest polling that we have, I believe it was the UC Berkeley poll. It looks like Schiff and Garvey are running away with it. Schiff, obviously the Democrat. Garvey is the Republican. Katie Porter and Barbara seem to be boxing each other out, both occupying the progressive lane.

What are your thoughts on this? Because the way that I view this is like it would be more beneficial for Democrats to have two Democrats that advance because it's a jungle primary in California. So the top two boat getters, regardless of party, will advance. To have two Democrats advance so that then, like, moving forward, you have two really popular Democratic candidates who pull, like, drive out voters across the state and, like, have down ballot implications for all of these. races and California is not like we have a lot of races that we lost by super close

margins and so having that in my opinion would be a big boon like an unpaid boon to draw out a lot of voters in the state that is otherwise like just this blue bastion where it doesn't really matter that much absolutely I just I'll highlight the point about the down ballot races so we could flip the House of Representatives just based on the races in California alone the competitive house races in this if you have Adam Schiff and Steve Garvey in running against each other in November, that's going to bring out a lot of Republican voters.

Those Republican voters are going to turn out in a lot of these competitive house races. If you have Adam Schiff and Katie Porter in November running against each other, a lot of those Republicans that were going to come out for Steve Garvey might not come out. But a lot of Democrats will come out, a ton of Democrats will come out

because they'll want to choose between who they like better, who they like better. And so it is better for not just, like not just all down ballot races, but especially the U.S. House races. And look, so the reason that Garvey has been going up in the polls is Adam Schiff has been running ads to boost Steve Garvey's name ID so that he could get Garvey as an opponent and not Katie Porter because then he has a better chance to win. Which I get, like, I get the strategy there and that's like Adam, Adam Schiff can do that

if he wants to do that, right? Like, that's just politics. Yeah. But if I were someone who liked both Adam Schiff and Katie Porter, which I do a lot, I would vote for Katie Porter just because he's got this big lead. And I really want to see Schiff and Porter in the final race so that then once we get to November, then everyone can make up their minds. They can have a couple more months of Katie Porter and Adam Schiff going back and forth. And everyone's like, yeah, well, that's wasting a lot of money. You don't have to give a lot of money.

You don't have to give them any money. That was the biggest criticism because I had spoken about this a bit. on Twitter, which was my first mistake, to engage with people on Twitter. Always. I have not learned that, but yeah. That was the number one criticism. It's like, look at all this money that's going to be dumped into this race. We can choose not to dump money into that race. We all have agency here. There are much more important races, like Montana, Arizona, Ohio.

And so, like, put your money toward that race. We're not, like, devoid of agency in all of this. Like, we can choose if we want to donate to certain races and if we don't. And so if we don't want to, like, dump money into a California race between two Democrats, just don't right it's as easy as that yeah no my my view on this is we should want two democrats in the runoff and we should also donate money elsewhere and you know what it doesn't even to be out of california donate to a house democrat or donate to one of these house races that is really competitive in california so that we can help flip the house yeah but i mean the benefit

of this of having two democrats in the in the uh in the senate runoff ultimately would be like would be it would be an in kind contribution to every democrat across the state running in the these house races. John, where can we see and hear more from you? Well, I'm always on Pod Save America. We have our YouTube channel. And I'm also hosting offline. You can do that. We got a book coming out in late June, Democracy or else, How to Save America in 10 Easy Steps. You can pre-order now by going to cricket.com slash books. It's funny. It's got illustrations. If you're someone who's like, all this politics stuff is crazy, but I want to get involved and I'm scared. I don't know where to start. It's a good way to start.

Perfect. We'll put the link to that in the post description of this video and the show notes of the podcast. Favs, thanks so much for taking the time. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. This was fun. Thanks again to John. 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. free to leave a five-star rating and a review and check out brian tylercoen.com for links

to all of my other channels.