No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Trump suddenly rocked with bombshell new ruling in court

Episode Date: December 3, 2023

Trump faces a raft of new legal issues after a bombshell ruling. Brian interviews Senator Tammy Baldwin about Trump’s promises to again overturn the ACA which she helped write and an interesting tidbit about her likely Republican opponent.Support Tammy Baldwin: https://www.tammybaldwin.com/Shop 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 new raft of legal issues that Trump is now having to contend with, and I interview Senator Tammy Baldwin about Trump's promises to again overturn the ACA, which she helped write, and an interesting tidbit about her likely Republican opponent in 2024. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So we've got a new major legal hurdle for Donald Trump. At a time where he's trying to figure out ways to avoid his ongoing lawsuits, a judge has now ruled that he can be sued in civil lawsuits related to the end.

insurrection on January 6th, which means three existing January 6 lawsuits are now allowed to proceed, including those brought by Capitol Police officers and two members of Congress. It also means that other lawsuits may be able to proceed as well, meaning that far from figuring out ways to wind down his court appearances by seeking to get his criminal cases thrown out, he may very well find himself contending with half a dozen civil lawsuits over his incitement of the insurrection on January 6th. The decision was handed down by an appeals court that said that Donald Trump does not have presidential immunity, which has been Trump's ongoing excuse that he's protected from litigation because everything he did as president was protected as an official

duty. The court didn't agree with the opinion laying out that not everything a president does in office is protected from liability. Quote, the president does not spend every minute of every day exercising official responsibilities. And when he acts outside the functions of his office, he does not continue to enjoy immunity. When he acts in an unofficial private capacity, he is subject to civil suits like any private citizen. And just going to go out on a limb here, but Donald Trump lying that a free and fair election was stolen simply because he wasn't happy with the results and then inciting an insurrection against the seat of government to prevent the electoral vote certification doesn't exactly

fall into the bucket of official presidential duties. I mean, think about it. By Trump's logic, he could command his supporters to shoot someone right in front of the White House or even shoot someone himself and yet defer all responsibility under this absurd notion that he isn't subject to any liability because he's got blanket immunity as president, regardless of whether his actions actually comport with his presidential oath or not, which of course is insane. And so because he acted outside the scope of his duties while performing those actions, he is not protected by presidential immunity and therefore can be subject

to lawsuits. So tough day for Donald Trump when he has to find out that being president doesn't actually make you a king. But here's the interesting part. It's not just civil lawsuits where this decision will actually impact Trump. It can also impact him in his ongoing criminal prosecution in Washington, D.C. I spoke with former federal prosecutor Glenn Kershner about this issue, and here's what he had to say. I love this piece of it, because, you know, this doesn't directly answer the question, can Donald Trump be prosecuted criminally, or does he have some kind of magical unicorn absolute immunity from being criminally prosecuted? This is really and important what I'll call atmospheric precedent. Why do I call it atmospheric precedent? It's not

legal precedent. It's not like the criminal courts will now say, oh, the civil case was resolved in the following way. Therefore, we will apply it as precedent to the criminal case, but it's atmospheric precedent. It lends support for the conclusion that if you can be sued civilly, where presidents have lots of protection because of Presidential Act immunity. But if you can't even clear that bar, well, if you committed crimes while president, there's no way you've got any lingering immunity left in any view of the state of the law. So it really is kind of important. And it's interesting because the appellate court said, look, what you were doing Donald Trump on and around January 6th, apart from the fact that you've been criminally indicted, you were committing crimes,

is you were trying to regain power. You were trying to override the expressed will of the American voters. And there's one thing that that is not. It's not a presidential act. It's the act of a candidate. And that is really one of the pegs on which the three-judge panel hung their hat, their legal decision. They said, this can't possibly be a presidential.

act because it was the act of a candidate if it was any kind of a lawful act. But we're going to learn more about, I think, the view of the law moving forward because not only was it not a presidential act, it was an illegal act. And that's why at the end of the day, he's not going to enjoy any immunity civilly or criminally. And of course, for more breaking legal news, Glenn and I host a show together on YouTube called The Legal Breakdown. So if you're not subscribed on YouTube, definitely make sure to subscribe.

But the takeaway here is actually pretty simple. Trump may claim that he's the victim of some unfair political persecution. But remember, it was the Giuliani's and the John Eastman's and the Jeffrey Clarks and the Jenna Ellis's who goaded him on, who helped him. Those are his lawyers and his aides. The left was universally begging and pleading with him not to interfere in the election, not to incite an insurrection, not to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. The left were the only people giving him the right advice, advice that had he followed it, would have kept him out of the courtroom. So when he blames Democrats for the avalanche of litigation that he's contending with now and that he's about to contend with in the aftermath of this decision,

just remember that it was his decision and his aides and attorney's advice that landed him where he is today, not the Democrats. Dude's trying to lead the party of personal responsibility now might be a good time to actually try taking some. Next up is my interview with Senator Tammy Baldwin. Now you've got the U.S. senator from Wisconsin, Tammy Baldwin. Thanks for coming back on. I'm so delighted to join you.

So because we live in this doom loop, we are now back to dealing with an impending effort by Donald Trump to overturn the ACA, the Affordable Care Act, if he's reelected as president. So first off, can I have your response to this claim by Donald Trump? Well, we all know there's no better way to try to win votes than to rip away people's health care. I mean, it's unbelievable that he is bringing this up. And, you know, it's such a serious issue because I remember when we first, past the Affordable Care Act as it's getting implemented, et cetera, it's many, many people for the first

time had health insurance or the peace of mind that they wouldn't be kicked off their health insurance if they were to get sick. And it was terrifying for many families to see the constant threats that were lodged to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Remember, the House, I think, had 50 separate votes to do that. And it was ultimately John McCain with his thumbs down in the Senate that saved the Affordable Care Act. And we just can't go back to this craziness. This was a step forward and we need to continue to make progress, not strip back the hard fought victories. Well, you know, this is a recurring, to that exact point, this is a recurring theme on the right. And I'm not asking you to kind of get into the heads of these Republican lawmakers and senators and candidates.

But while they're pushing to strip away reproductive health care, while pushing to strip away climate protections, while they're pushing to strip away now, you know, health care and health coverage, why do you presume that they're pushing forward with these unpopular edicts, I guess you could say, even as they're losing races as the direct result of them. I mean, you yourself alluded to the fact that back in 2018, this was the reason that Republicans lost that election in such sweeping fashion? Yeah, I mean, I think it's because too many of them are in the pockets of powerful, wealthy interests. I mean, who's for taking away the Affordable Care Act?

The big health systems and insurance companies and the big pharmaceutical companies, the folks that are behind most of the measures are their benefactors. and have very powerful presence in, sadly, in Washington, D.C. on Capitol Hill. And they're playing to them. And we can't have it. We have fought so long with such high stakes to stand up to big health insurance, to make sure that they have to cover people who've been sick before, who have a preexisting condition like diabetes or they're a survivor of breast cancer

or their HIV positive. We cannot go back to the days when insurance companies had the say and could simply say no. And for the big pharmaceutical companies, they protected them for way too long. And just last year, we had this major breakthrough in the Inflation Reduction Act where we finally stood up to Big Pharma and said Medicare must be able to negotiate lower prices. And already we're seeing some of the results. Vaccines are without co-pays for seniors. Insulin is now no more than $35 a month out of pocket for seniors on Medicare. And we're fighting hard to make sure that that will soon be true for everybody with diabetes who needs insulin.

And the first 10 drugs have been named, and Medicare is in the process of negotiating down. these prices. There's no way that the Republicans should defend the fact that we are currently paying more in America for life-saving medications than any other country on Earth. That makes no sense. And we've made these breakthroughs, and we've got to run on them, too. Well, you know, it is only a matter of time before Donald Trump gets out of the primary, where he is right now, and into the general, and pretends that, in fact, he loves the Affordable Care Act. So what is your message to voters in advance of Donald Trump's inevitable gaslighting on this issue? Listen to what he says now, right?

Before he's trying to switch from primary mode to general election mode, I think you have every reason to trust that he does want to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and that he will take steps to do that as he did when he was last president of the United States. States. In fact, it was so close. They had already repealed it in the House, and it was one vote away from being overturned in the Senate. He will do it again. And so it's why these elections have such high stakes. It's why we've got to stay animated and activated to make sure that people know that this election, this next election, is about not only your access to health care and the affordability of that health care, but also your basic rights and freedoms to control your body and to access the health care that you need. You wrote the wildly popular provision in the ACA that allows young people to stay on their

parents' insurance until they're 26. In plain terms, what would it mean for young people, especially if the ACA was to get overturned? So we all know that if you go right from, say, high school into the workforce, that first job is not likely to have full health insurance benefits. You know that if you're right out of high school and maybe juggling college with a part-time job, that that's not going to offer you a path to health insurance. My provision that allowed young people to stay on their parents' health insurance until they turned 26, overnight, when that measure was implemented, millions of people who had no health insurance before got it. And that is something that we've got to fight hard to maintain because repealing the Affordable Care Act would go back to the old days, where pretty much anybody in that age

group is really unlikely to have affordable and I should mention comprehensive health care. I alluded to this before, but so far the policy proposals among Republicans, like I said, are stripping women of the reproductive rights, undoing climate action, protecting the ultra wealthy from tax audits and now stripping health care from Americans. Can I have your response in general to this anti-majoritarian platform from the Republican Party? Yeah, you know, on one hand, Donald Trump used to try to appeal as a populist, and yet he touts just any number of proposals that so harm the working people of the United States. We've got to make sure we are clear as the opposition party to the Trump Republicans that this is harmful policy that he is

peddling. And that under his previous administration, that we lost such ground in terms of rights and freedoms. His efforts to place three new Supreme Court justices have resulted in many steps backwards since he left office. And it will be a while before we're going to be able to properly address that, sadly. So he left a legacy of damage, and we cannot let him become president again. So you're running for reelection to the Senate in what is widely known as the tipping point states. That's Wisconsin. Now, Trump won that state by 0.7% in 2016. Biden won it by almost the same margin in 2020. I believe it was 0.6%. What are you doing now to ensure that this Senate stays in Democratic hands? Well, first I want to underscore your point that Wisconsin could

easily decide or be the deciding state in terms of who controls the White House and which party controls the United States Senate. We are the ultimate battleground state. And I take that very seriously as I begin to mount a campaign for re-election to the United States Senate. And part of, the emphasis that you see the National Republicans place on Wisconsin includes bringing their national convention to Milwaukee, Wisconsin next year. So we are squarely in their sites in terms of where they think they can make the biggest difference. So I start my reelection effort knowing that they're very much focused on Wisconsin. But I'd suggest to you that there's another reason that they really focus on me. And that is because, as we've just been discussing, I'm not afraid to stand up to

those powerful, moneyed interests and fight for the working people of my state. And you know what, in addition to that, it's not enough to just be unafraid to stand up. Sometimes we've got to win, and we have. And we really have to tout that as we move forward. You told the older stories of passing the Affordable Care Act. I was in the House of Representatives. on a panel helping to write that, and it was my amendment that allows young people to stay on their parents' health insurance until they turned 26. But our more recent victories have included standing up to the big pharmaceutical companies and getting Medicare to negotiate lower prices. But I'm not afraid to stand up to the big multinational corporations that see profit and quarterly

profits as their only goal. Corporate greed has impacted. of Wisconsin workers over decades of poor trade policies or favoring conditions where they bring manufacturing from a big state, manufacturing state like Wisconsin overseas, offshore, where the cost of production is lower because there's no laws to protect workers, to encourage unions, to protect workers' safety, to protect the environment. Yes, it's cheaper to produce in countries that have those circumstances. And Buy America policies, which I consider myself to be the Senate champion of Buy America policies, the simple proposition that when we are using taxpayer dollars, that that should benefit U.S. workers and small businesses. I mean, that makes total sense

when we're talking about taxpayer dollars. And we've won. I've been pursuing these in the infrastructure bill. We got it in the infrastructure bill. We got it in the infrastructure bill. in the Chipson Science Act that we passed last year, I got it in the Chips and Science spill. We put it in the Inflation Reduction Act so that this new clean energy, renewable energy economy, that U.S. workers can be in the lead, not following. And so these are exciting opportunities. When you stand up to those powerful interests, you can win. And then the last one I wanted to mention was the extremists that we are,

seeing, have greater and greater influence and power. They were successful after a multi-decade fight to overturn Roe versus Wade with the Dobbs decision last year. They are introducing and leading to the introduction of all sorts of anti-LGBQ, anti-Woke, if you will, pieces of legislation. They are having a real impact at all levels of government. And it's why after Dobbs, when they put marriage equality in the crosshairs as their next step, I led the effort to pass the Respect for Marriage Act in the Senate,

standing up to those extremists, but still being able to bring in 12 of my Republican colleagues to join all Democrats to pass that measure. We're almost on the year anniversary of President Biden signing the respect for, marriage act into law, which of course repealed the old Defense of Marriage Act. And so I just want people to feel some hope and encouragement that we can stand up to these wealthy, powerful interests. We can win. And it's hard work, but we've got to be there to do it. Well, you mentioned wealthy, powerful interest, which brings me to your potential opponent in this 2024 election. It may be a guy named Eric Havdi, who is a multimillionaire banker who lives in Laguna Beach, California. Now, he was asked where he spends most of his time, whether he spends that time in California

or Wisconsin. I'm going to read you his quote, quote, this is laughable. I'm born in Wisconsin, raised in Wisconsin, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin. My home is Wisconsin. I have a business in Wisconsin, so that's my response, which, of course, is a lot of words to avoid answering the actual question. Can I get your response to the prospect of a California, banker running to represent Wisconsin and the U.S. Senate? We've made a little light of that recently. You know, you're right. He owns, he's the president and CEO of a bank, a big regional bank.

He lives in Laguna Beach. And we kind of suggested that there might be an open U.S. Senate seat in California. Right. Right? You know, maybe that's what he's looking to do. But no, no, no. he protests, he says, I'm going to run in Wisconsin. I think Wisconsinites will be very interested to know about where he spends his time, the fact that he's missed several important votes in the

state. And, you know, I think that Wisconsinites really want somebody who is a resident, frequent resident of the state of Wisconsin to be their representative working hard for them in the United States Senate. And I think Wisconsinites also want somebody who gets them, who's worked hard and who has known what it means to make an honest wage, who knows what it's like to have to fight for recognition of their union, who knows what it's like when it's hard to make the budget, you know, hard to keep your budget because the cost of,

health care and medicines is so high. I think people of Wisconsin want somebody who really gets them. And that's not Eric Hovey. It's hard to, it's hard to see why Republicans wouldn't want to go the way of Dr. Oz in New Jersey, but here we are. Right. Well, that is their playbook, right? It's a page from the Republican playbook these days. They are actively recruiting multimillionaires to run in the swing states, the battleground states so that they can write a hefty check. We have another multimillionaire in Wisconsin who's looking at getting into the race. It's like they're dueling, like, I'll put in $15 million of my own wealth. Well, I'll put in $20 million of my own wealth.

They've literally been saying those things to the media. And it's quite a sort of new chapter in how politics work on the Republican side of the ledger. Yeah, and to your exact point, I mean, having these multimillioners run the own races, it does allow them to self-finance so that they can divert that money to other places where they might be able to use it otherwise. And so if they just have multi-millioners running in all of their races who can self-finance, then they can focus on down-ballot races. They can focus on congressional races and on. So this is, again, just a way to kind of allow them to manipulate this system. And super PACs, right? Exactly, exactly. Just anywhere where they can find

the money, they're taking advantage. Can you talk about Hubdy's position on both abortion rights and the ACA in terms of what his election could mean? first of all, he has a record because he did run for U.S. Senate in 2012. He came in second in the Republican primary in Wisconsin and then went back to being a California bank owner. But that said, you know, he took positions on these issues. He supports a nationwide abortion ban. And he supported repeal of the Affordable Care Act. In fact, that was something he vigorously ran on in in his previous campaign in 2012. He also is somebody, like many of the Republicans,

who look to decimate the two bedrock programs that have been earned benefits for seniors in the U.S. He would look at radical changes to both Social Security and Medicare. And those are some of the best ideas that we've ever had. They were democratic ideas, but they have stood the test of time in making sure that when we work hard and play by the rules that we can retire with dignity and security. Well, now that Joe Manchin is no longer running for Senate in West Virginia, how does that impact the stakes of your election in Wisconsin?

So right now in the United States Senate, there are 51 Democrats or people who caucus with the Democrats and 49 Republicans. Joe Manchin represents a state that went overwhelmingly for Trump in 2020, and it will be difficult for a Democrat other than Joe Manchin to successfully wage a race in West Virginia. So then we'd be down to 50-50 in the Senate. Every battleground state then becomes a target, and Wisconsin is one of them. So they're going to go all in, including having their convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin next year. They're going to go all in in trying to defeat me.

And it is a critical race to win in order to keep a progressive Senate and keep our country moving in the right direction, not repealing our rights and freedoms. To that point, how can we help your campaign? Well, I certainly would encourage everyone to go to Tammybaldwin.com. There's many ways you can help. There are ways you can help that include donating to my campaign, and you can do that online. If you're in Wisconsin, there's lots of volunteer activities. And no matter where you are on the country, you can follow me on social media and help us expand reach to the message of the important work that I've done. The victories I just told you about when we stood up to

powerful interests and we won and the many battles we still have to fight. And just to underscore the importance of donating now early, I know that we're, you know, just about a year out from the election, but being able to donate now and get on the airwaves now would allow the senator to kind of define herself before Republicans have the chance to redefine her in their own image, which will, of course, be full of obfuscations and misinformation. So with that said, again, I'll put that link in the post description of this video and the show notes on the podcast. So Senator Baldwin, thank you so much for taking the time and best of luck on the campaign trail. Thank you so much. Great to be with you. Thanks again to

Senator Baldwin. 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 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 briantylercoen.com for links to all of my other channels.