The Bulwark Podcast - Ben Wittes and Ron Filipkowski: Guilty!

Episode Date: May 31, 2024

Donald Trump collaborated with a slimy crew to break the law, and it may have swung the 2016 election. Russia's election interference was troubling—and so is the National Enquirer's. And the deranged response from MAGA goons to his conviction only shows how much Trumpworld operates like an organized crime syndicate. Ben Wittes and Ron Filipkowski join Tim Miller for the weekend pod. show notes: Tim's interview with Ron on The Next Level Tim's playlist Tim's special GUILTY! playlist

landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment is below 21 degrees? Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained. If it isn't and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash rentsafeTO. Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Friday, May 31st, and I've got some good news for you if you haven't heard. A Manhattan jury found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying

business records in his hush money criminal trial. It is a historic verdict because it's the first time a former U.S. president has been convicted of a felony. I'm pretty excited about this. I am here today with someone else who I think also might have a little bit of dispassionate joy. Our man in New Amsterdam, the guy that's been following this trial for us closely, Ben Wittes of Lawfare, of Dogshirt Daily on Substack, of the Brookings Institution. Ben, how are you doing, my man? I am excellent. It's been an interesting day. We were just winding down. We were finishing a live stream, 4.30. I walk out the door. We shut down our live stream. There's no verdict. I walk outside. I'm walking to the subway station to go have an early dinner

with a friend. And I get a notice from one of Lawfare's people inside the court that they have a verdict. And my first reaction to it is, this is a joke because I'm about to get into a subway and go have dinner with a friend up on 49th Street, which is a joke, because I'm about to get into a subway and go have dinner with a friend up on 49th Street, which is nowhere near the court. And so my response on Slack was, is this a joke? I was on set with Nicole Wallace on MSNBC. And if people, for those of you who DVR, Deadline White House, if you go back to yesterday's at 4.37 Eastern Time, when the verdict comes down surprising everyone on set, even the supposed legal experts

like yourself at Lawfare, like Andrew Weiss, everybody's like, what? And it comes in Nicole's ear and she says, we have a verdict. You might hear a little gay squeal. Oh my God! And then immediately in my ear, they're like, all right all right bro we're getting this

guy in the chambray shirt offset we need some lawyers we need some legal experts we don't need any comedic asides here at this historic moment so um it was definitely memorable um i want to hear from you initially i was planning on talking about the closings you know when we thought maybe there would not quite be a verdict yet so i'm just wondering the nature of how quick it was. I mean, obviously it surprised you, but what do you think that says about the whole process? Well, it surprised me and it didn't. I mean, this morning I texted my crew that we should expect a verdict today. And one of them asked me when, and I jokingly said, it'll be at 2.17. And so I was off by two hours and three minutes.

Look, I sat through this whole trial, and I think I told you I would give two to one odds on a guilty verdict. substantial, despite what the people on the MAGA right and a lot of people who should know better have been saying for the last, you know, sort of repeating like mantras. The evidence was not trivial. This was not a weak case. And you get 12 people who are not politically involved, and you subject them to five weeks of the scummiest people they will ever come across. I mean, these are unbelievably slimy people. And the only question at the end of the day is, do you believe that all of the records, and there's like thousands and thousands of records, do you believe that all of that and a whole bunch of witnesses, some of whom still work for Donald Trump, some of whom like Hope Hicks and Jeff McConaughey, they love Donald Trump and Madeline Westerhut, or however you pronounce her name, you know, they really

regret the great mistake they made in screwing up that caused Donald Trump to fire them, but they still love him. Do you believe all those people? Or do you believe that Michael Cohen kind of went rogue and paid off Stormy Daniels by himself and then was paid $420,000 over the course of 2017 to do less than 10 hours of legal work. Not a compelling defense. It's not an especially compelling defense. And whenever you've asked me, I've tried to be fair to the defense and lay out the case that they're making. And I think I've done it fairly. But if you're asking me, like 12 average New Yorkers who are as apolitical as you can be, because you don't get on this jury if you bombard them with this for five weeks, and then you let Josh Steinglass yell at them for five hours on Tuesday, which is what he did, five, six hours, he just talked and talked and talked, and he put every piece of information right in their faces. I was kind

of critical of it as a closing argument. I thought it was too long. The prosecution's closing. Yeah, I thought it was too long. But how are you getting to reasonable doubt here? And I think what you saw was that the jury took a full day yesterday and then a full day today. So it's basically two whole days. They went through a lot of material, but they came to what the evidence suggested, which is that these charges are true. Like the grand version of these charges are true, which is Stormy Daniels is telling the truth about what happened in 2006, and Michael Cohen is telling the truth about what happened in 2006, and Michael Cohen is telling the truth about what happened in 2016, and the records are telling the truth about what happened in 2017. When you

actually spend the time to go through it piece by piece, and you're not bombarded with the Fox News bullshit, it's not that hard a question. And that's what happened today. So I want to get ahead to the sentencing. I've got a lot of questions for you about that. But I want to just take the lens back a little bit because a lot of people missed on the strength of Alvin Bragg's case. A lot of people in the pundit class missed on this.

Some people who came on this podcast missed. I want to be fair to everybody. There were some people who their complaint about the case wasn't that they thought that the facts of the case were weak, but that it was weak comparatively to the very serious crimes that Donald Trump committed trying to overthrow our democracy. And I think that's a reasonable argument. So let's set that aside. But there are others who just were arguing that like on the merits, this is frivolous. This is not that strong. This is, you know, obviously people more to the right would say this was political. How did everybody miss that so badly? And as it turned out, Alvin Bragg had clearly just based on the outcome and based on the presentations, an extremely strong case. And yet the conventional wisdom was just totally wrong

about that for the entire year. So the conventional wisdom was wrong. And I do want to say that lawfare was different from the rest of the... I should have said that. We didn't push the case, but we took what other people took as weakness of the case as more, hey, he hasn't presented it yet. Let's see how it looks. Some of it was the difference between a federal case where you tend to lay everything out in the indictment. You say a whole lot more with what's called a speaking indictment and you speak very loudly and you tell people what you've got. And the New York indictment didn't do that. And so when you read the indictment, it seemed very spare and it seemed like he wasn't telling you very much. And maybe that was because

he didn't really have very much. That was a lot of people who didn't understand New York law. That's just not the way people practice in New York criminal courts. So that was one element that, you know, it's a whole lot of former federal prosecutors who kind of look down their noses at mere state prosecutors and don't actually know very much about the state system in New York and so didn't bother to do the work. And there was a certain amount of that. And that was compounded by the fact that, remember, the federal prosecutors passed on this case. And they prosecuted Michael Cohen, and then they didn't prosecute individual one, right? Right. And so it looked like, if you're a snooty federal prosecutor type, it looks like, well,

this is a case that the feds knew about and looked at and didn't want to do, but brags doing it anyway, right? Because he's political. So there's a certain amount of that. There was a certain amount of just right-wing attacks on elected Democratic, one may say Black, prosecutors. You saw that a lot with Fannie Willis too. And lost in both of those orientations, which are very different, are the fact that, you know, these guys know their own court better than the people who are talking about them on Fox News do. And, like, they bring these cases under this statute. This is a workhorse New York, you know, white-collar statute. They bring these cases all the time and they know what they can and can't get away with in front of a New York jury, right? And so there's a kind

of intimacy with the process, with how you try these cases that these guys just haven't. You saw that working, watching this case week in, week out, these guys knew what they were doing. And they were in control of the situation really from the very beginning. So that's one thing. And then I think there was another thing, which is that people confused what they perceived as the triviality of the case with weakness. Those are different things. The strength of the case is how much evidence you have, right? Can you prove what you're alleging?

The triviality question is, does what you're alleging matter, right? And I think it is a fair criticism of this case, at least it was, that kind of like the Clinton-Lewinsky stuff, it just doesn't matter that much. He fucked somebody and then he committed some minor crimes to cover it up, right? But... This is where the election part of it, I do, this is where the election part comes in. And I do think it just keeps getting lost, and I'll let you go off on this, but to have my say my piece on this since you know it's the news of the day like i think it's underappreciated we really don't know whether this swung the 2016 election like it is a chance that donald trump breaking the law to cover up this affair actually did swing the 2016 election some people look at you

and you say that and be like oh come on you on. You know, like the Access Hollywood tape came out, et cetera, et cetera. And he overcame that. But Trump benefited hugely by the news environment in the last two weeks. Every piece of data says that. The voters broke for Trump in the last two weeks. Was it because of the Comey letter? Was it because Donald Trump behaved himself the last two weeks? Was it because people just were sick of Clinton and Boban wanted to change?

There are a million things that could have been. But we don't know. What we do know is that it broke late and that this payoff for sex, forcible sex, that happened in 2006 happened mere weeks beforehand, right before the election. And so if the news environment was all about Stormy Daniels and how, oh my God, Melania was breastfeeding when this was happening, might that have flipped the small number of votes in each of these states? That's a non-zero chance. And so that takes away the triviality of this, for me at least. Yeah, so I would come to the same conclusion from a different perspective. I am not a political analyst, and I yield to you on others on the plausibility

of the claim, which, by the way, Joshua Stein Glass made in closing arguments. I mean, he said specifically to the jury that this may have made a difference that we don't know. I have no way to evaluate that. I don't have a good instinct about it. But I approach it from a different question, which is, you know, I spent a huge amount of time in 2016 and 2017 thinking about Russian interference in the 2016 election. And what was Russian interference in the 2016 election? It was a barrage of tweets and Facebook posts, you know, that seemed trivial and stupid and were aimed at kind of median online people, right? They never gave Donald Trump the ability to edit their stories. They never made up malicious slanders against his opponents and put them in every supermarket line in the country. They didn't prevent Stormy

Daniels from coming forward, right? They didn't prevent Karen McDougal from coming forward, you know, and all of that stuff was in fact done, but it was done in coordination with the campaign by an American outlet called AMI run by the aptly named David Pecker. And I think, you know, if you're concerned about Russian interference in the election, you should be concerned about American interference in the election in violation of campaign finance law, you know, frank violation of campaign, admitted violation of campaign finance law by an American corporation that actually has the eyes of everybody coming out of a supermarket. I don't want to say it made the difference. I just want to say if Russian interference bothered you,

AMI's actions should bother you too. And they were done with the explicit collusion. Let's use the word collusion. It was active. It was personal with Donald Trump. And then he caused a bunch of records in the Trump organization to be a New York prosecutor to say that actually makes it a little bit different from the Monica Lewinsky scam. Or the John Edwards one, which hit a hung jury. I was trying to get this on air yesterday because Suzanne Craig brought this up on MS. And it wasn't the same. The John Edwards thing was the same in that they both were breaking the same campaign finance law, but the context And it wasn't the same. The John Edwards thing, it was same in that they both were breaking the same campaign finance law, but the context of it all was very different. Right. And so I think it is fair to criticize this case early on for being trivial. But the more it got presented, the less trivial it seemed to me. And I actually thought David Pecker's testimony,

which was not the centerpiece of the case, people were obsessed with Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels, but I would urge people, the transcripts are up on the New York court website, go find them or read the summaries of it on Lawfare. Read the David Pecker testimony. It's astonishing what he claims, admits, swears to about what they did in 2015 and 2016 and what Donald Trump's personal role in that is. And so I have come to think the case is less trivial than I did, and I never thought it was particularly trivial, but I did think that that criticism had some merit in somewhat the same way that the Lewinsky one did. I don't think that anymore. And then finally, I also think that the case has suffered in the public eye from the fact that it is not the January 6th case. You know, the case against, on the classified

documents, gets a buy for this iniquitous crime because it involves stealing classified information, which is itself a kind of high crime, right? And this just feels, by comparison to January 6th, unimportant. But, you know, there are a lot of crimes that aren't the January 6th. Yeah, there are a lot of crimes. And by the way, Donald Trump has committed a lot of crimes that isn't the January 6th thing.

This is another thing that has driven me crazy for years. It's been like a, I've been a one man hobby horse on this. If you gave any, anybody in Donald Trump's circle who is not just a total, you know, moron sycophant, anyone with any ability for rational thought, a few beers and said to them, do you believe that the Trump organization followed the law when Donald Trump was in charge of the organization in his business work? None of them would have said yes. Donald Trump for years has been bullying the prosecutors, bullying the legal system, finding loopholes, bankruptcying himself. He has done business in a shady way that begged to be called to account for a long, long time.

And this one nipped them. And so to me, that is also part of this context. If it was like one of these things where it's like, this is a prim and proper businessman and the campaign finance laws are a little vague. Sure. But that's not the case we have here. It was 34 counts, and it was guilty on all 34. And frankly, if somebody really turned over the books at the Trump administration, there'd be way more than 34 counts. I think we all agree with that. Well, actually, in the closing argument, there are way more than 34. One of the things that Steinglass does is he shows the jury all the false business records that they didn't indict. You know, hey, here's another false business record, you know, where they sent a 1099 to Michael Cohen that says, you want to see another false business record?

Here's an invoice from a company that they used to cover up this payment. We didn't bother to charge that one. There's like 10 of these documents that are like false business records. And that's just in this case. Our friend Roberta Kaplan, there's a whole other civil case about another pyramid scheme that he ran selling bullshit.

Then there's Trump University. I mean, the whole thing has been a grift and a scam for years. So like that is the other part of it. It's like, okay, sure. Maybe if you feel this one specific thing doesn't rise to whatever your arbitrary level is of seriousness, but like it's a pattern of criminal business behavior that he's been engaging in his whole fucking life. That's clearly right. And the evidence of that is now the number of juries that have all gone the same way. And none of them have taken a very long amount of time to do it. And so you have the two defamation about rape cases.

You've got the Trump Organization criminal matter. You've got this. You've got the Weisselberg matter. I mean, at this point, there's a fairly large number of cases and some of them are jury trials and some of them are judge trials, but they all end up going the same way. And unless you're, you know, a kind of MAGA true believer, it's not because these, you know, all these randomly selected New Yorkers are Trump haters. Yeah. Okay. Let's move on to sentencing. I had a friend who is not a legal eagle ask me,

the first question I want you to ask Ben Witta says, why didn't the jury do the sentencing? So let's start at level zero here for those of us who are not lawfare experts. Okay. So as a general matter, there are certain exceptions to this, particularly in capital cases where juries have to do sentencing. Generally speaking, juries don't do sentencing, judges do sentencing. And in this case, actually, Todd Blanch in his closing argument said to the jury, you don't want to send Donald Trump to jail on the basis of the testimony of Michael Cohen. And the judge admonished him about it and actually gave the jury an instruction, a special instruction to correct this error, that this was a grossly improper thing to do,

to suggest that the jury had a role in sentencing. Sentencing is the judge's prerogative, and the jury's job is to decide guilt or innocence and nothing else. Okay. So now we go to Judge Vershawn. We have a date. It is four days before the Republican convention. It's July 11th. Yep. A couple of weeks after the first debate, should that actually happen, which I think is a TBD still. Not great timing politically. Went into the politics with Ron Filipkowski. But what happens between here and there? What do you expect? To be honest, I've been kind of surprised.

George Conway on his podcast with Sarah Longwood, people should listen to, says he thinks for a variety of reasons that jail is really probable here. On Fox, the Fox legal analysts were also saying that that is a real possibility here. So I'm curious, your assessment on the Blobsville jail and also just kind of on the run of show here between now and July 11th. All right. So the run of show is easy. He will have to go and meet with a probation officer for a pre-sentence report.

That will be a degrading exercise. So Donald sits in a little chair in some office in Manhattan where it's like some probation officer. And you think the court is dingy. Check out the pre-sentence report. This probation officer who's just like every 15 minutes is cycling through drug dealers and, you know, sex offenders. Right, and billionaires and former presidents. And yeah, that's right.

That is nice. And he's going to have to go through that interview. And then that person is going to write a report. And then both sides will, you know, brief the question of what they think under New York sentencing rules Judge Merchan should do. Now, there's a few variables here. So, on the one hand, if you say it's a nonviolent first offense, right, normally speaking, you'd be talking about probation for this offense. But normally speaking, you wouldn't have taken this case to trial as a defendant, right? You would have pleaded this out. And so the second thing is- And normally speaking, the defendant would show some contrition. Maybe it's fake,

but would at least pretend to. Maybe he wouldn't have attacked repeatedly the judge's daughter, right? So there's the kind of usual ease, and then there's this case, right, which has some genuinely crazy aggravating factors. Like I'm comparing this to the case where the other real estate guy fudged a few documents, but never sicked him off on the Capitol. It's not like it was an apples to apples.

But then also when we confronted with him and we threw a whole lot and said we were going to indict him, he pled out to this. And by the way, he was very contrite about it and he was under financial stress and blah, blah, blah. That's not this case. And so I've looked only at a few of these cases. There's nothing even in the ballpark of comparable to something like this, because there's no defendant even in the ballpark of comparable to Donald Trump. And so I think the only way I know how to answer to this question is say, we're going to learn a lot about Wan Mirchang. You know, is he the sort of person who's been storing up all of these indignities, all of these things that Trump has been doing, all these affronts that the defense

has done, the daily press conferences, and he's just been saying, just you wait, life is long, eventually I'm going to fucking sentence you, right? And then you could see, I mean, there's a max under these is like three to four years. It's not a trivial statute. Or... My grin, sorry, I'm sorry. I had an involuntary shit-eating grin that just came across my face when you said three to four years. I'm not letting myself think about that. I'm sorry. Continue. Or is he the sort of person who says, this is a nonviolent first offender. You know, the January 6th case isn't in front of me. He hasn't been convicted of that anyway. I have nothing to say about classified documents or Georgia RICO. That's not before me. What's before me is a jury conviction on these counts, and here are the factors I'm going to consider. And at the end of the day,

maybe I give him 30 days or maybe I give him four years or three years of probation, right? I think you're going to learn a lot about the judge in this case and how he thinks about it. Eric Adams said today that they're already prepping Rikers for him. I think you're going to learn a lot about the judge in this case and how he thinks about it. Eric Adams said today that they're already prepping Rikers for him. Well, that's news to me. I think it might be news to Rikers, too. Eric Adams, as far as I can tell, shoots from the hip from time to time, so to speak. Look, I mean, Allen Weisselberg's there.

I hear he's lonely. He's still got some time. Maybe a sweet mate? Hang out together. Boy, that's really something. We've got six weeks until that, huh? Just kind of think about that. But he's got six weeks to stew and just kind of think about the possibility.

And, of course, there's another factor now, which is know he's on supervised release but he's convicted at this point and i think the likelihood that justice marchand will tolerate like the screws are tightening a little bit now and i and i you know i do think what he's able to get away with may be a little bit less dramatic than it was last week. Does Justice Rashan have another case? What's he doing the next six weeks? I assume he's going back to his regular workload. Fascinating. What a world. I'm still kind of stuck on that probation officer. Never wanted to be a probation officer more in my life. I mean, you are hitting the probation officer more in my life.

You are hitting the probation officer lottery. Donald Trump comes in. I am hamming that up. I am hamming the fuck out of that. Walking through his history. Trump, you, the potential limits on the rules, what a halfway house looks like. He's got to think about what his employment possibilities are. He might be the next president of the United States, right? You know, or maybe he'll be the proprietor of some golf clubs.

You know, it's an interesting case. It's also the voting. The voting element of this is also kind of interesting. Yeah, that's,'s i think a matter of florida law and i don't know what florida law is we're doing some reporting on that there'll be more on that to come um ben with us you've just been a peach throughout this whole process thank you for being our special correspondent on the trump trial hey man one down three to go three more trials to go and a sentencing so this is is not goodbye. This is just see you soon.

I will be back on July 11th and eventually we're going to have a trial in DC and in South Florida. And as Charlie would say, we'll be back and we'll do this all over again. We'll do this all over again. And boy, if we have a trial in South Florida and he's a former president, well, maybe I'll be joining the Hype House. I'll let you know about that. I might be a special correspondent for Lawfare. All right. Ben Wittes, thank you so much. Cheers to you. Up next, my friend, the most successful RVAT alum, Ron Filipkowski. Stick around. It's going to be good. Landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment is below 21 degrees? Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough.

Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained. If it isn't and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash RentSafeTO. And we are back. All right. So I was thinking about who else to have on the podcast today on this glorious day where Donald Trump has been convicted of 34 felony counts. And I was like, I need somebody that can do some grave dancing with me who's been in the

battle, who's been in the fight. And I also need somebody who can comment on the insane, insane, deranged response from the MAGA right to this jury verdict. And the obvious answer to that is my buddy, Ron Falkowski. Hey, Ron, what's going on, man? Hey, thanks for the invite. Appreciate it. Yeah, I love dancing on graves. I'm pumped to have you back. We're going to have a moment right now. For people who don't know, so Ron is editor-in-chief at Midas Touch. So I'm sure some of you guys know that, MidasTouch.com.

He is co-host of Uncovered. He's an attorney himself, Marine, former federal and state prosecutor. But for anybody who listened to my interview with him on the Next Level podcast, maybe last year, and knows our backstory, you know that Ron's most affectionate and important title is the Kelly Clarkson of the RVAT campaign. Ron sent in an awesome video back in 2020 about how he was a former Republican, named his kid after Ronald Reagan, former Marine, and how he couldn't vote for Donald Trump again, went super viral. And now here he is. He's a content man. And he's exceeded even me. He's grown bigger and better than American Idol. He's a sun that rises above us.

So Ron, how's that for an intro for you? Anything I missed there in your bio? Wow, that was great. I'll never forget the day i made that video you know i i agonized about it for like four days because i really felt like cortez like burning the boats on the beach you know as i'm invading mexico like there was no going back and i wore a trump tie actually i went and got a trump tie to wear for that just like a red tie or trump brand a trump brand his Yeah. And it was red, but it was a Donald Trump tie. Just because I was kind of hoping like in the back of my mind, someday he might see it and say, wait a minute, he's wearing a Donald Trump tie. Just to kind of stick the knife in a little. Yeah, just a little twist. Do you know my backstory with Trump ties?

Me and Trump had a confrontation over his ties. We were running an ad campaign in 2016, back when I was in that Never Trump pack. It was called Our Principles Pack. Turned out everybody that's part of Our Principles Pack, except for me and my friend Katie Packer, ended up supporting Trump in the general election. So the principles were pretty wishy-washy. We've learned about the Republican consultant class. But anyway, we were running an ad about how Trump manufactured all his products overseas because this is his whole thing. It was America first, blah, blah, blah.

And I happened to encounter him in a debate spin room as the ad was going up. And I went to grab his tie. And I was like, can we see where this was made? Where was your tie made? And then Trump obviously recognizes me from TV because all he does is watch TV and golf. And so he starts shouting at me about Jeb. Anyway, the video is out there. This is a gettable video from the before times. Ron, you've been monitoring this just day in, day out in the fever swamps. First, how does this make you feel, the result? How did you feel yesterday? And then secondly,

how do you think it's making the Trump inner circle feel right now since you monitor their social media feeds closer than anybody? How it made me feel is almost identical to how I felt like the night after the 2020 election. Honestly, when everybody is celebrating, was saying like, it's over now. And I was just like then, I remember vividly then going, oh no, this is far from over. He is never going to concede. He's never going to go away. You were going to have to drag him out of the White House kicking and screaming, and then he's not done. And I sort of feel the same way now. That was a big step towards

eradicating this person from American culture and American political life, but it wasn't the final step. And I sort of feel this is, again, another step, but far from the end. Are you at least buoyed? Do you at least have a skip in your step today? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because think about the alternative. If he's found not guilty or a hung jury, this is a completely different feeling, right? I mean, they're beating their chest, they're celebrating, they're saying they're vindicated and it would be bad, you know, and it was all rigged and he defeated the rigged Democrats, you know? So yes, I mean, it's more relief though, to me than celebration, you know, elation. But, you know, I always think about those low information, moderate Republican voters who don't watch cable news.

They're taking their kids to Little League games. You know who I'm talking about, of course. And they watch ESPN and golf, and they check in three months out from an election. They don't vote in primaries, those voters. And I truly believe this will impact them. I really do. Same. I do too. And this is across the board. It's not just the Republicans. It's in the Biden coalition. I actually think about those voters more, black and Latino voters, young voters. And I'm not talking about the young voters who are on Columbia campus.

I'm talking about the young voters who just aren't paying attention that much, you know, and are on TikTok and are just living their lives, going to keg parties, you know, vaping, whatever the teens are doing these days, you know, and are on TikTok and are just living their lives, going to keg parties, you know, vaping, whatever the teens are doing these days, you know, and this is going to break through to them. So yes, the former Republicans are people, but also the people in the Democratic coalition who are just, they aren't psyched about Joe Biden, for whatever reason, could be his age, could be inflation, could be whatever. They're not psyched about him, but their minds haven't been focused on the choice. And this guilty verdict is going to be something that will break through to them and i think the other thing that we're going to talk about

the insane reaction from republicans is also going to be something that breaks through so i think that it's very politically significant in addition to being a righteous adjudication of justice well i guess really quick, before we get to the Trump family reaction, you have a legal background. What is your take on this? I mean, there are, you know, most people I think have underestimated Alvin Bragg.

We talked about this a little bit with Ben Wittes and the strength of this case. There's still though today, there's a New York Magazine piece today that said that they're still kind of saying they think the case was kind of weak. What was your assessment as a former prosecutor of the strength of the case? I mean, it was a creative case. You know, it certainly was and how they put it together.

But I read the transcript every single day of the whole trial. So I really was pretty plugged in. And I was just so impressed by the corroboration. I went into the trial very nervous about Michael Cohen. I think we all did. Because look, I've seen Cohen interviews before, read excerpts from his book. And to me, he's a different case than a Lev Parnas. He never completely accepted responsibility. And I never saw him as a victim of Donald Trump. I saw him as a co-conspirator, but he always portrayed himself that way. And I thought, if he does this on the witness stand, he's going to be a disaster. But he was so well prepared, and he did not do that. He was incredibly disciplined. They tried to bait him so

many times and he never took the bait. But the masterful job with the prosecution is everything he said, they backed it up with a document, a text message, an email, another witness. So the case really didn't rely on his credibility or Stormy Daniels' credibility. It was largely a documents case. And who really sunk him was his own people, his comptroller, the documentary evidence, the handwritten notes from his CFO, Alan Weisselberg. I think it was a creative, intelligent, thoughtful case, but it was also an extremely solid case. And I wasn't surprised at the least bit on the verdict. I thought the only shot he had was a hung jury. Yeah, same. Okay. So you spend even more

than me. I've kind of taken a little break from the Fever Swamps ever since Candice. Candice was one of my guilty pleasures. Candice and Bannon are kind of how I keep my finger on the pulse of what's happening in MAGA world. So since I've lost Candice, I've been searching around for other podcasts and I just, it's tough for me. I don't know how you do it. You know, the Charlie Kirk podcast and I've been listening to and Patrick bet David. And it's just,

you know, there's the same crazy as Candice has, but there isn't the joie de vivre. There's no surprises. I know it's coming. I have to start to tune out. So anyway, you suffer through all these guys.

You've been suffering through them for 12 hours.. We're taping this on Friday morning. Donald Trump does have a press conference about an hour from now, Eastern time, which we'll be talking about on Monday's podcast. So the pre-press conference reacts. How would you describe it? Oh, completely unhinged. I watched a bunch while I'm a little bleary eyed. I was up really late watching Donald Trump Jr. and, you know, Kim Guilfoyle and all of them because, yeah, that's what I do. What you described is there were already people that cover right wing media that monitor Fox and Newsmax. But I really dove into their whole podcast ecosystem, which is very important because some of these people have millions of viewers that

watch their stuff, you know, hundreds of thousands, certainly. So I think it's very important to have your finger on the pulse of that world. But yeah, they were in freak out mode, which didn't surprise me very much. I guess, you know, what I always look to was what is going to be the reaction of, you know, the normies, the Mitch McConnell's, the Lindsey Graham's, you know, those kinds of people. I was really looking towards Mike Johnson. I don't know that you would call him a normie, but you know, I guess the most I was hoping for them was silence. I was sort of hoping that they would say nothing.

And I thought that that was the best we could hope for, but no, they went all in all of them. The only one who didn't was Larry Hogan, you know, who's already won his primary and is running in a blue state. Yeah, the Larry Hogan case is very telling. And I would like to have Governor Hogan on this podcast. I've been trying to get him. I think we could have an interesting conversation about this because I think his response is telling about

how somebody like him even navigates this world these days. He writes, Regardless of the result, I urge all Americans to respect the verdict and the legal process. At this dangerously divided moment in our history, all leaders, regardless of party, must not pour fuel on the fire with more toxic partisanship. We must reaffirm what has made this nation great, the rule of law. A great statement. He didn't even really attack Trump. Just just a we should respect the rule of law respect the process trust the processes you know they say in philly chris lasavita campaign manager

for donald trump responds to that quote tweet you just ended your campaign that's how trump's campaign manager donald trump's campaign manager also in the middle of the night yeah takes out the college republicans opinions are like ass the night, takes out the college Republicans. Opinions are like assholes, he said to the college Republicans who just tweeted. College Republicans started their tweet with, today's convictions are the result of a politically motivated prosecution, but we should respect the jury. In part, there's a deranged, unhinged, natural reaction that I want to get to from some on the far right.

But of that normie crowd, to me, the interesting thing is that Donald Trump and his goons are now policing the response of anybody that would even want to try to have even a basic, anodyne, reasonable response. They're out there saying, no, you do this, you're out. We don't care about your fucking Senate seat or about your whatever. If you do anything to provide aid and comfort to the people prosecuting Donald Trump, you're out of here. I think that was very telling.

And in that respect, the Trump world operates like an organized crime operation. It's really like a mob. In the mob, if you step out of line in any way, that's it. You're whacked. You're out. And there's no leaving the family right the only it's only only two ways you leave the family you know in prison or in a box right yeah we're in hiding there are a few of them that are in hiding and that's that's the republican party right now they're at this point if you're still in with trump you don't get out you can't get out freely and easily you have to just leave the space like Kinzinger or Cheney. Yeah, I guess I'm trying to think who's in witness protection. I guess you got Mike Pence in witness protection. Did Mike say anything yesterday?

Nothing. This occurs to me. I only pulled this up right now. Nothing from Pence. Last comment from Mike Pence was about his trip to the southern border 15 hours ago. Nothing from Pence. So, you know, here's the other thing, because I think talking about the press conference, Biden recently added a new line to his stump speech, and he's used it twice. So it wasn't a one off. The line is something snapped in Donald Trump after he lost the election and he's going with the mentally unfit area that I wish the media would do more mainstream, you know, which is to question his mental fitness and his sanity. Because if you've watched as much Trump as I have, and I've watched every public utterance that he's made in the last four years, he has gotten so much worse over the last two years, even. He's completely unhinged.

And a lot of the American voters have not seen this version of Trump. Their recollection is what they saw in 2020. But he's way worse. And I think this verdict is going to cause him to circle the drain and become more unhinged even more. That's interesting. Give me some examples of that, because I go back and forth on this, because look, I'm an OG OG. Fuck 2016. Back in 2012, Donald Trump flirted with running for two minutes, and I was working for John Huntsman at the time. And I was like, this person is a deranged

lunatic. It is insane to even think that he could run for president. And so sometimes I feel like my eyes are too bleary in assessing him, you know, because I go back and forth. I'm with you. Sometimes I'm like, man, he does seem like he's deteriorating. Other times I'm like, no, I don't know. Maybe this is the same fucking asshole that he was in 1986. So what are some examples of the increasingly unhinged behavior? You know, I think like pardoning the J-6ers, poisoning the blood of the country. He used to be more subtle in his insults, I think. Now he's just, you watch him, he has his script on the teleprompter that he's supposed to say.

And a lot of that is policy. And he can't do it. He doesn't want to do it. He's not interested. And I think what I noticed before is he used to stick to the teleprompter and occasionally riff, veer off and then come back to the speech. Now he's almost wholly abandoned the speech. The speech is almost boring to him. I mean, can you imagine him now doing a rally after this conviction and talking about tax policy or any policy. It's all personal grievance with him now,

one right after the other. And so I think this is going to make him even worse. And I think Biden is smart to needle him on this point. Yeah, I do too. I was saying last night on MS during the late night shift when I can make suggestions like this, like 147 in the morning when nobody's watching. I was like, I think that Biden should hold a press conference where he just reads the bleats. I just reads them and just goes, do we want this fucking person to be the president?

And this is an unhinged lunatic. I'm going to eradicate the fascists and the communists and all caps witch hunt. And you kind of imagine old man Biden being like all caps, you know, witch hunt, kind of imagine old man biden being like all caps you know witch hunt rigged capital misspelled i don't know his material is crazy what about so what about the kids we were texting this morning eric has posted an instagram post with the with the american flag upside down uh which is i guess good news for colin kaepernick to know this is okay now flag

protests are totally fine i guess maybe just if if you're a white son of a former president. And Don Jr., you mentioned, I saw a TikTok of his. I don't know if he has eye Botox or what's happening. He can't even open his eyes really anymore, but he's ranting about how the country's gone to shit. The people in that inner, inner circle around Trump, they seem very radicalized by all this. I don't know what your assessment is watching.

Honestly, like I was expecting to get from those people like, hey, we expected this. This is no big deal. It's all Democrats. Move on. Yeah. But that's really not their reaction. Their reaction is really over the top in terms of anger, despair, fury. I don't really think that that was necessarily the right way to play this. To me, I would have just been like, blase, like, hey,

this is nothing, shrug it off, we move on, not amplify it, you know, the way that they are. And to me, they're making more of a deal out of it than they should. Yeah, I think they've convinced themselves that this really rallies the troops. I think that they buy their own bullshit. There are seven people on Twitter last night that are like, now I've never voted for Trump before, and now I am. And it's like, some of these people are probably lying. Maybe two of them are true.

You know what I mean? People that are particularly internet pilled, their brains work a different way than regular people. And so I do think they've convinced themselves i looked at this you know trump and his acolytes were sharing this from cat turd last night that their favorite surrogate 6.7 million views on this from cat turd the fascist democrats have completely destroyed our country from within they're shitting on the constitution while you spineless coward losers get rich on insider trading and talk about your principles. If you don't have the balls to fight for freedom, resign.

This is a message for Mitch McConnell, I guess. Communist show trials, kangaroo courts. This is nutty stuff. America is so unfixably corrupt and that there's these evil communists that are out to get them, that rallies the most brainbroken internet people, that they think that that's a winner. And I think that they've convinced themselves of that, don't you, when you watch all of them? Yes. And what I always say to them, like Vish Burrow was another one who had some unhinged responses, who was George Santos' chief of staff, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. If you look at the places that they're from, I mean, Cat Turd lives in a swamp. His town has

5,000 people in it. And this is supposed to be the guy who has the finger on the pulse of the American public living in a swamp in Northwest Florida. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who represents the district where Deliverance was filmed. She's got her finger on the pulse of public opinion in America. You know, Vish Burra, George Santos' chief of staff. I mean, give me a break. I think Vish is a sometimes listener to this podcast. So I want to say what's up, Vish. He inverse monitors us like you monitor them.

So I just wanted to say what's up to my man. Okay. Hi, Vish. Yeah, we're cool. So we do DM. Maybe calm down if you're listening this is not a banana republic this is not an insane banana uh the country is not going to shit this whole notion of like oh if they can do this to me they can do this to you it's like what are you talking about yeah sure if you're running for president and you are running a corrupt organization that defrauds

people constantly and you misfile business records to try to cover up the affair that you had with a porn star, like, yeah, this could happen to you. But otherwise, this is a deranged concern. Can we also talk about when folding this into the unhinged part of it and Chris LaCivita and Steve Chung and his campaign operation, Jason Miller, can we add in the whole week to put this in context, which a week ago began with Trump doing a rally in the Bronx. Now we can talk about whether that was a good use of a campaign day to do a Bronx rally where he brought up on stage two people who are out on bond, one for conspiracy to commit murder on 140 count indictment and proudly accepted their endorsement and said

that he wanted a set of gold teeth just like the guy then he follows that up with a saturday memorial day weekend a critical day in a presidential campaign a big day when you could do a huge event what does he do the libertarian convention where he gets booed off stage this is his week. Let's go back to the Bronx thing for a second, actually, because this, I think this is important in a, not just a, was this a good use of a day question? Because I agree with you about that. But the broader picture that is painted here about that week is Donald Trump is convicted of a crime. Okay. He's convicted of 34 felony counts. You can create a list of all the

advisors around him, his former campaign chairman, his former accountant, Weisselberg, his former fixer, Cohen, his former strategist, Bannon and Stone, like he has indicted people all around him. Now he has on stage two indicted gangsters who are out on bail for murder. Again, when we talk about those voters, the political strategy of this, they have now given on a silver platter to the Biden campaign an opportunity to say, I'm running against a criminal who's surrounded by criminals,

who's unapologetic about his criminality, who's bringing other criminals up on stage. That's not a winning message in Buckhead. Buckhead moms and dads who swung for, who voted for Brian Kemp and Raphael Warnock, they're not looking for a bunch of criminals who want to tear the whole system down. You know?

A great example of that is Brian Kemp who hasn't endorsed Trump. And his wife, Brian Kemp's wife has said she will not vote for Donald Trump. I want to put a finer point on this because I think that we can mock these people and it is absurd and we can laugh and point at them and they're suffering today. And I want to do all of those things. But I think there's a dangerous element to this. We had Mike Collins, who's the troll representative from Georgia, he tweeted last night, time for red state AGs and DAs to get busy.

And then retweeted himself a few hours later, Hillary Clinton's Steele dossier is a good start. The statute of limitations expired, but I don't care. That's not a thing anymore. Okay, so this is a congressman now suggesting that republican elected officials should just randomly go after democrats um you know without any care about whether you know there's a real crime or whether the statute of limitations is told but he's not it's not just him many others were suggesting that i'm sure you saw others but there was one that really stuck out to me again one of the supposed normies somebody that had a job on nbc daytime NBC News. This woman, Megyn Kelly,

she was supposed to be the softer, gentler Megyn Kelly. Speaking of Kelly Clarkson, she was going to have a little Kelly Clarkson show on NBC News. And here she is now on her podcast. And let's take a listen to what her response was to the Trump guilty burden. These Democrats will rue the day they decided to use lawfare to stop a presidential candidate. I'm not talking about violence. I'm talking about tit for tat. You just wait and it won't be Hunter Biden the next time. It's going to be Joe Biden. It could potentially still be Barack Obama. It could still potentially be Hillary Clinton. We're going to have to look at what the statutes of limitations are

on the various crimes they surely committed. We're going to have to look at passing laws to revive those dead crimes. Vince Foster? What fucking crimes is she talking about? What crimes did Barack Obama commit? those dead crimes. Vince Foster? What fucking crimes is she talking about? What crimes did Barack Obama commit? Show your work.

Like, what are these people talking about? I mean, on the one hand, it's dangerous and it's scary. It's like, this is where it's going, because you know, you know, random red state DAs are going to do this for attention. But on the other hand, it's like, what are you, you need to go to grand juries. Then you need to go to actual juries. You need to present them evidence like this. It was not like some, you know, Joe Biden, Dick tot from DC determining that, that Donald Trump was guilty.

It was a jury. What are these people talking about? You know, the other bizarre thing about Megyn Kelly and people like her is that Trump despises Megyn Kelly. Trump insults her regularly. MAGA people don't like Megyn Kelly. I think she tried to be anti-Trump for a little while, for five minutes, and it wasn't working for her because she's trying to build an audience. And if you're trying to build a conservative Republican audience now for a podcast and you're going to be anti-Trump, what is your audience? Where is it going to come from? So I sort of watched her evolve from trying to be a little bit anti-Trump, sort of like in that Ann Coulter box, to just completely abandoning that and going all in for Trump. Meanwhile, he continues to insult her.

He posted an insult about her a couple months ago. Just no dignity. And she got a payout by NBC News. What are you doing, Megyn Kelly? Why are you doing this for Donald Trump? You're threatening. What are you threatening Barack Obama for? Are you searching for the birth certificate still? This is insane. Here's Sean Davis, head of the federalists now a well-read outlet insane outlet but well read on the right in 2024 i want to see lists of which democrat officials are going to be put in prison this is what andrew egger is writing about in today's morning shots newsletter for the bulwark like people need to commit crimes like what are these people talking about about how the system of justice is totally broken the biden doj is

currently indicting his own son who's about to go to trial yeah who's about to go to trial i think bob menendez a democratic senator from new jersey henry quayar uh the democratic congressman from texas well that's the list of which democratic officials are being indicted they're being indicted by the biden justice department it doesn't seem like any of this matters. They need to construct, Megyn Kelly and Sean Davis and Mike Collins and Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, need to construct this fantasy where the Democrats are just out there randomly putting people in jail because they did wrong think, when in reality, all they're doing is convicting a guy who's a career fraudster before he was even in politics. Yeah. And you're right. It's very common. I mean,

you see this across the board and many places where they call for DAs to prosecute people. The guy I'm watching is Ken Paxton because, you know, he'll do just about anything. He'll do any criminality. If there's going to be a state DA that's going to do something crazy, it'll be him or it'll be the Bailey guy in Missouri who's also talking crazy. So I wouldn't put it past one of these knuckleheads to try something like that. Me neither. And I just have two minds of it. On the one hand, I'm kind of like, bring it. Okay. Okay,

Ken Paxton, try to indict Joe Biden. See how it goes. It'll look like the stupid fucking impeachment kangaroo court that Jim Comer was running, where they don't have anything. They don't have anything. They wanted to impeach him the whole time. They don't have anything to impeach him over. So go ahead. If you have documents

where Joe Biden committed business fraud, then go ahead, indict him. On the other hand, I know that Megyn Kelly said, oh, I don't mean violence, but you just think about what it means for the fabric of our society. If you have 30%, 40% of the country that has

decided that the system is out to get them, that it doesn't work, that there's just some communists and fascists that are taking over the country and they are taking away everything that they hold dear and it doesn't matter anymore. It's a banana Republican, it's a kangaroo court. What do you think that means for society? How do you think people are going to react to that? I mean, you live in this world. You see the comments that are going by on the Rumble screen when these guys are talking. I mean, how concerned are you about just the radicalization that these folks are responsible for? Well, look, these people told me for months, I listened to them say that if Donald Trump is convicted, that there's going to be riots in the streets, right?

There's going to be this mass uprising of people. Where is it? Where's the protest? And what I've said is, look, a lot of these people are big talkers, but they saw the January 6th prosecutions and the way DOJ prosecuted every single one of those people who went in that building, whether it was a minor crime or a major crime, really sent a shot across the bow of these nutcases because they bring that up all the time about, hey, we need to go do this. And then they're like, well,

wait a minute, hold on. A lot of our people are still in prison right now from the last time we answered the call. So i think if there's anything it's going to be an isolated incident an isolated act of violence but there's not going to be anything like an organized uprising again from these people i don't think really now if he goes to jail that would be a that would be a different bar you know and i think he might go to jail i've been hearing from several i mean a george conway said this on the longwell conway podcast even some people on fox were saying this last night had some friends that are adjacent to um the da's office and people involved there like his behavior and it's hard to predict but he might actually go to jail and it's

four days before the convention it is know, the judge is not supposed to factor in the fact that Donald Trump has been personally attacking his family for months. You know, that's not supposed to be an aggravating factor here. But how can it not affect him in some way? How do you put that aside? It's got to be very difficult, you know, for him to do that. But there are aggravating factors in terms of when you're trying to decide whether a jail sentence is appropriate. And one of those is all of his gag order violations. And he's certainly not going to do what most criminal defendants do at their sentencing hearings, which is come in and express remorse and apologize. That's not

going to happen. I will say, I got to give you credit. When I was wavering a little bit on whether there was momentum away from Trump towards DeSantis, you said to me, no, man, dude, dude, you're not watching what's happening out here in the influencer world. Like, Ron DeSantis, that dog isn't gonna hunt. It's a bunker mentality with them right now. It really is.

And I think that that world is shrinking a little bit, you know, and it's getting tighter and more rabid. It's not broadening out at all. They believe that they have broadened out their base and they've tapped into black voters and Hispanic voters and all of that. So they believe that their base has expanded. I don't see it. I see the same people that talk a big game, but it doesn't happen. And look, we saw that reflected in the primary results where consistently state after state, 20% of people voted against Trump. Yeah.

All right, but I want to give the final word to somebody from a podcast from earlier this week. David Frum tweets this. I'm sick and tired of these goddamn anti-American hippies attacking the justice system, comparing this country to foreign dictatorships, vilifying the FBI, and flying the American flag upside down. You know, those are the most effective things when you use their own stuff against them. Amen. I totally agree with that. And we former Republicans do that, I think, better than anybody. I agree. I appreciate all the work you're doing out there, man. You're doing the Lord's work. If you people aren't following them, it's Ron Philip Kowski on X. He's editor chief at MidasTouch.com right now. We will continue to be talking between now and November. Enjoy it. I understand that you're stealing yourself for a continued battle. This is not

the final front, but enjoy it. Enjoy your weekend. I appreciate you very much and hope to see you soon. Okay. Thanks, Tim. Alright, thanks to Ron Filipkowski. Thank you to Ben Wittes for reporting for us from New York during this whole trial. Thanks to David Frum and all of our other wonderful guests this week. We will be back on Monday. I want you to enjoy your weekend. In the show notes,

the usual Spotify playlist where I have all the outro songs, but also a special New York Guilty themed playlist for you to enjoy at your barbecues or sitting by the pool or just hanging out inside and petting your cat, whatever it is you're doing this weekend. You enjoy it. You've deserved it. We'll see you back here on Monday and Donald Trump will still be a convicted felon. See you then. Peace. Here I am, in this city, with a fistful of dollars. And baby, you better believe I'm back, back in the New York blues.

The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper, with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown. I'm back, back in the New York blues. Back in the New York blues. of breath