The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol and Ben Wittes: We Still Have to Do the Work

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

The courts aren’t taking care of Trump and we can’t live in denial about the state of play. Meanwhile, words keep failing him at his weird rallies—and telling Romney voters you don't need them doesn't seem all that smart when Nikki gets 30% of the vote. Kristol rejoins Tim, and Wittes is back for a mini-Trump Trials. show notes: Send your questions here: [e-mail] Tim's Not My Party: https://t.snapchat.com/SnxQ5aG0

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We've got a 14th amendment ruling and much more on that. One quick note first, starting next week, I'm going to try out a mailbag segment on the show to give you all a little something, something if the guest is getting you down. Hint, hint, Bill. So send in your questions on politics. Yeah, but on anything you want my take on parenting, music, policy, gay stuff, travel, adoption, Louisiana, Nikola Jokic. If you need some life advice, I've got you. You know, if there's a man out there that's got you down and you want my feedback on it, I've got you on that too. So send in questions on whatever your heart desires.

The new mailbox, bulwarkpodcast at thebulwark.com, bulwarkpodcast at thebulwark.com. I'll answer the questions that pique our team's interest on the show. All right, Bill Crystal, you have any questions for me? You need any advice? My advice to our viewers and listeners is send Tim questions about Jokic. He's excellent on that topic. Some of those others, I don't know. I'd be a little, not so much maybe. Just my two cents worth, you know? Okay. Yeah. Well, we'll see what the people want. Everybody can think about it and you know, maybe it won't work out. Maybe this will be one of those one and done segments. We'll see what people think. All right. Nikki Haley has won

the Washington DC primary. About 2000 people turned out for this. And my response is, shouldn't these be the people that decide the nominees? Bring back smoke-filled rooms. 2,000 people in Washington, former administration officials, lobbyists, pundits. Shouldn't we be in charge? And not we anymore, but the royal we. Bill, what do you think about that? I know we're in the pro-democracy movement, but just for the primary process, maybe a little less direct democracy. The primary result of the Madison Hotel, one block from the bulwark offices and our our people, I think those who live in D.C., they trudged that block. You know, it was tough. It was uphill.

Maybe it was raining. But they went out to vote. So give them credit, you know. She won two to one in D.C. Trump got a third of the votes. That's a little disturbing about the D.C. Republicans. I guess. Those are the lobbies.

Many of them, I assume, worked for him or aspired to. They either worked for him or, you know, have very lucrative lobbying businesses based on their close connections with Trump world, right? Yeah, they're a little worried that somebody might have looked over their shoulder, you know, and seen their true vote. Okay, well, anyway, maybe for another podcast, but I'm half joking, half serious about how, I don't know, maybe we overdid it a little bit on our democracy when it comes to nominating contests. But, you know, we'll get some feedback on that another day. We are where we are. Trump, on the other hand, he was pretty weird this weekend. Frankly,

he had a speech in North Carolina, another one in Richmond. The creepy music is back. And there was one quote that stood out to me that I want to listen to about what he thinks about the people that voted for Nikki Haley in Washington, D.C. Let's take a listen. And they say, always trying to demean. Well, MAGA really represents 48 percent of the Republican Party. No, it represents 96 percent and maybe 100 percent. We're getting rid of the Romneys of the world.

We want to get Romneys and those out. We want to get Romneys and those out. We want to get Romneys and those out. Well, in the one sense, Bill, it's a pretty accurate pundit analysis of the party, but potentially harmful. I mean, is that a useful message? I think that really did hurt Carrie Lake when she said, get the hell out to the McCain voters. It's kind of a PG version of that. What do you think? Isn't Nikki Haley getting all in, leave aside D.C., which I will acknowledge is a bit of an outlier.

What, about a third of the vote, I think, so far in the Republican primaries? We just add them all up? Yeah, sure. And I think she may get a quarter or so, maybe more than that, tomorrow on Super Tuesday. I'm hopeful here in Virginia,

I'll be up voting early and often here and taking a Republican ballot for Nikki Haley. I believe you've commented that you took here in Virginia. I'll be up voting early and often here and taking a Republican ballot for Nikki Haley. I believe you've commented that you took one in Louisiana. I re-registered. We're not Super Tuesday. It's not till later, but I need to re-register. You have to actually re-register. I was worried that I was going to get struck down from the heavens when I clicked the Republican button. It gave me a shiver down my spine. I felt a cold chill. What else are you going to do? You know, here's the thing. I'm not becoming a Republican or anything. And obviously,

like Nikki's not going to win, but why not do anything that you can to on the margins? We can Trump is the one motivation. And the other is there's no better endorphin rush than getting to walk into the booth and vote against Donald Trump. And so I'm excited to get to do that one bonus time. I'm glad you've preceded me in sort of, we don't have to re-register here, but I'll be asking for a Republican ballot to our morning for the first time, I guess, what, in seven years, huh? So I should get a drink first, maybe. You think I can do it, though? I don't know. I would get a drink. I would, you know, maybe wear a little light wrap, you know, just to kind of protect your skin from any potential,

you know, sort of demons. I will do that tomorrow morning. And yeah, anyway, look, I mean, let's just say Nikki Haley gets 30% of the vote in these Republican primaries. Let's even say that half those voters are really Democrat Biden voters, ultimately. And so Trump's not alienating them half, maybe a little high, but some number like that. Still less 15% of the vote is going against Donald Trump. He really is telling them all, forget it. I don't want you in the party. That elects Biden or any other Democrat, right? So, I mean, I do think he's being a little cavalier and I hope the Democratic candidate uses this against Trump. I mean, you need to explicitly tell people Trump does not want your vote. You know, you voted for Nikki Haley, Trump doesn't want your vote. That's a pretty good short ad, I think.

It does. And anecdotally, I mentioned having spent a lot of time in Arizona in the midterm for the bulwark and the circus and covering that race. Again, I don't know how much you can measure this, but it came up when I was talking to people that Carrie Lake said that, that she didn't want John McCain voters votes. And so, you know, I do think that certain people for whom, you know, their identity is tied to being that part of the Republican party and who have maybe reluctantly at some level gone along with Trump or, you know, maybe they didn't vote or maybe they voted for him and held their nose. Yeah. I think that clips like that, you know, it's not a silver bullet, but I can add to kind of the case to nudge some of those people that one step further.

It's one thing to attack another candidate. Trump's really gone the step further, which they always tell you not to do in politics, which is to attack the candidate's supporters. That clip of Trump, he's not just saying, I don't like Mitt Romney. You know, he said, I don't want any of these people who are supporting Romney or Haley. As you say, that's exactly what Carrie Lake said in Arizona, I think. It wasn't just that she attacked McCain. She doesn't want those

McCain backers. Yeah, get out of the room. Maybe that will do some damage. Let's hope so. Question is whether Nikki is taking him up on this. I know this is a Lucio at the football situation, and I'm just not letting myself hope. But it is noteworthy. We should at least listen. Here is Nikki on the Sunday shows this weekend talking about

whether she has to abide by her pledge to support Donald Trump. You did sign a pledge, an RNC pledge to support the eventual nominee. Do you still feel bound by that pledge? I have always said that I have serious concerns about Donald Trump. I have even more concerns about Joe Biden. So is that a no? Are you bound by the RNC pledge? The RNC pledge, I mean, at the time of the debate, we had to take it to where would you support the nominee? And you had to, in order to get on that debate stage, you said yes.

The RNC is now not the same RNC. So you're no longer bound by that pledge? No, I think I'll make what decision I want to make, but that's not something I'm thinking about. Do we have a technicality here? By kicking Ronna McRomney out, did they give Nikki an out? How do you read that?

What's your Haley Kremlinology there on that answer? I mean, it would just be easier to say that, you know what, as Haley said elsewhere in the show, she's not sure Donald Trump believes in the Constitution. And that's a good enough reason not to vote for him in the fall. And she's been getting there gradually. She's been doing it in her own way right over the last three, four weeks. And I do think there's a reasonable chance she will not endorse Trump. The non-binding, non-legal contract that I signed is now voided. There was no notary public when I signed the document.

So I get to move forward. I'm hoping, I'm not hoping, I'm interested. Unfortunately, it's meaningful. Nikki sitting it out, I think makes a difference in the margins. The Not My Party I did last week was all about this. Where frankly, I think the most important four months for her legacy and her influence are the next four months, not the last four months and kind of how she decides to handle that. So fingers crossed, let's say. All right, Bill, are you ready? People, if you don't want to hear about the New York Times polls, if you're enjoying your weekend, you know, and you just don't want to hear about it, you can just click that fast forward button five minutes and, you know, we'll be on to something else. But for the rest of you, Donald Trump, 48,

Joe Biden, 43, New York Times, Sienna, Biden had a 32% favorable, 59% unfavorable, as you point out in your morning newsletter. Another interesting number on the approval, 38% approval, 47% strongly disapprove, 73% think he's too old to do the gig. Bill, your response is that we should not be living in denial about these numbers. Talk about that. Yeah, there were three other polls this weekend that also had Biden down. He could win, obviously. Trump is so flawed, and Biden could have something of a comeback. But I don't know. These are very bad numbers for an incumbent. He can't fix the age issue, really. He might reassure people that he's in better shape than some people out there think. The judgment on his incumbency, once that settles

in, I've seen this over the years, it can be totally unfair. It was unfair in the George H.W. Bush administration in which I served. But once it settles in, it gets beyond any one issue, immigration, inflation, and it just becomes he's not up to the job. You combine that with the age issue, I think he should step aside. And I think a non-80-year-old, non-incumbent Democrat, any of a host of governors actually, could defeat Donald Trump and maybe do so pretty easily. I know it's late and it's hard and how do you arrange the succession and all this, but that's... And Kamala Harris, you're familiar that there's a vice president? I'm not sure at this point that she wouldn't be stronger,

but I think you need someone who's not part of this administration. There's such an anti-incumbency mood out there, again, some of it unfairly, that I think recognizing that reality would suggest finding some governor. Some of these governors have pretty good approval ratings, incidentally, and they won big in 2022, so I'm for them. But as you say, it's funny, we began talking about the DC Republican primary and smoke-filled rooms. Yeah, we could use a 1932 type smoke-filled convention where on the third or fourth ballot, the Westmore, Josh Shapiro, Liz Cheney, a surprise VP ticket

emerges and they win easily over Trump and save the republic. But that's a little hard to imagine these days, but you need to have a little imagination in politics. And denial is a useful psychological mechanism. Obviously, none of us could make it through probably the trials and tribulations of life without a certain amount of denial and wishful thinking. Biden really is in denial.

That interview, have you seen that new New Yorker piece that's out just early this morning by Evan S. Osnos? Yes. I don't know. I think he and his team are in denial. And I think maybe I can shock them out of denial, but probably not. So we're all going to be supporting Biden.

Don't get me wrong. I'm there. You know, and if it's Biden v. Trump, I'm for Biden. But I think one shot at it. You're putting on the t-shirt. One shot at improving the odds of defeating Trump is worth taking here, I think. I should have just brought JVL on the podcast. He is in the Atlantic today. Biden is still the Democrat with the best bet for November. No amount of wishful thinking is going to magically

produce a winning candidate. Going around and around on this is probably not that helpful at this point. But here's the way in which I agree with your point. And Dan Pfeiffer made a similar point to yours, you know, maybe not about necessarily replacing Biden, but just about how to look at these numbers. And here's Pfeiffer. He says, instead of dismissing the polls, we should embrace the idea that Donald Trump can win this election and then use that frightening notion to re-energize the anti-MAGA majority that delivered victories in 18, 19, 22, and 23, telling people what they want to hear, maybe satisfying in the short term, but it rarely works out. And I think that his point is well taken, right? That I blanch at the reflexive, oh, the polls have been wrong. The polls are

terrible. This is biased. A, I lived through this when I was on the other side in 2012. Everybody was unskewing the polls in favor of Mitt Romney and people were looking through the crosstabs and convinced that Mitt Romney is actually going to win. And I was the one person at the RNC. I was literally, I remember being in the RNC in a conference room, looking at the people in charge of the data and the politics and saying, prove this to me, walk me through this, because I think you're wrong. I think the numbers are pretty clear that we're on a track to lose. And they got mad at me and I was no longer invited to those meetings. So you don't want that to happen in the Biden campaign. In fairness, as the deputy communications

director, was I needed in those meetings? Probably not. But still, I certainly wasn't needed if I was going to be the turd in the punch bowl. So it's not helpful to not pay attention to it. Assuming it is Biden, then there are things you can take away from this about like what needs to be done and pretending like the numbers aren't what the numbers are. And pretending like the polls have been that far off. Like I go back to 22, for example, and there's this kind of belief that the polls were really off when really the punditry was off. Right. Self-included, by the way. Like if you looked at the numbers, they ended up being pretty close to reality. And they're a little bit off, right?

It's anytime, like polls aren't perfect, right? And so just like in 2020, they're off a point or two, but it's not like there was an eight point miss. There was almost no miss in 2022. I was actually on the, we're a case of being correct, sort of said there wasn't going to be a red wave. The reason I said that is I was actually looking at the polls and they were R plus one, Republican plus one, Republican plus two.

And that is not a wave. A wave is plus eight or something like that. And in fact, the final results nationally, if you had a poll, the House races was about R plus two and a half. So they weren't off. Democrats won a couple of very close races that helped too in the Senate and stuff. And then Republicans had some awful candidates, which made a difference at the governor's level. So with Kerry Lake, your friend there in Arizona, and obviously in Pennsylvania and Michigan. So interestingly, I looked at 2016 and 2020, the two races Trump has been involved in, which probably are pretty good guidance for this one. And the polls, even in March, were not off the final result by much. Hillary Clinton did, I think, a point worse than the March average poll, the March 4th or whatever today's average polls had. And I think Biden

did a point worse actually in 2020. But the polls said Hillary's going to win a narrow popular vote, victory, Biden's going to win a more comfortable one in March. And they were right. And the final point I make just, one reason they may not be off much, unfortunately, is these are two incumbents. This is not the situation where you have a challenger and voters learn more about that person and he gets disqualified where they learn more about that person and he's okay. That was the Reagan 1980 situation. Everyone has seen Trump as president for four years. They've seen Biden as president for three years.

They're settling into this Biden, Trump plus Biden, Trump plus three plus four type judgment, that could be changed, it could get eroded, it could flip the other way and be a very narrow Biden lead. But it's worrisome. And it's only one other poll number, I didn't mention this in my little piece, that's very striking, is people's retrospective judgment of the Trump presidency is that it was good for them. They benefited personally from it. I know you can't believe it, right? But maybe that could be changed with a lot of advertising and education. But their current judgment of the Biden presidency is negative. So it's not even that they're sort of having like an image of, you know, some challenger who turns out not to be quite so good. They think they're making their decision based on their own

perception. That's a harder thing to change, right? Then I haven't really don't know much about this guy, but I've seen him on TV twice. They know Biden and Trump. Yeah, I think that there is one potential way to change it, which I want to get to in one second. And I will make one caveat to my anti-un-skewing of polls. You know, people and MAGA people are deep in the crosstabs of the Times and some of these polls talking about how much better Trump is doing with voters of color, particularly working class black and Hispanic voters. It was Ron DeSantis' pollster, Chris Wilson, who's pretty good, frankly, which I think is something that we have seen on trends. Republicans are getting

with Latinos. There's a major caveat, though. Only 3% of the Times polls Latino interviews were in Spanish, but Spanish-dominant Latinos are usually about 20% of Hispanic voters. And in 2022, they went for Democrats by 40 over Republicans. And so you have seen this. And I think that Nevada polls, some of these other states that have a lot of Latinos and Spanish speaking ones have under counted them. And that has been kind of the one consistent miss of the polls over the past few cycles. So anyway, worth noting that. I want to talk about potentially, optimistically, the way some people might change their view on Trump. And this is this kind of conversation about how Trump has not been in their face. A lot of people that are casually watching this, I could have picked a million clips from these two weird rallies that I suffered through

this weekend. But here's just one.'s listen to donald trump talking something about russia with a score behind him recently heard that saudi arabia and russia will repeat do will be reducing their oil production so sad while at the same time substantially increasing the price was that music from the rally or did you just put that the music is from the rally at the same time substantially increasing the price. Was that music from the rally, or did you just put that in here? The music is from the rally. That is insane. About 40 minutes into his rally,

some fascistic kind of background music comes in now. There's a QAnon connection. I can't quite figure it out, but people in the crowd start putting one finger up. It's very cultish, very weird, and he couldn't say't say warmonger again we could have done a million clips this is the weird thing where he gets lost talking about drilling in russia i do think this is our optimistic case right that like people have like tuned him out and now it's like wait a minute this guy i've kind of forgot how weird he was like not obviously not of this podcast, but people who have

normal lives who listen to podcasts about the Real Housewives or the NFL or something, maybe getting re-reminded of him. I totally agree with that. And I hope that people get re-reminded of how both extreme and crazy and also just weird he is. And also he's not exactly a spring chicken himself. And all of that makes Trump very vulnerable. I think Trump should lose in 2024, all things. And his numbers are bad. I mean, again, if you and I showed up somewhere and they give you a thing and here's the challenger with a 43-54, I think, that's not great. I mean, if you're a challenger, usually you're a little... Biden was fine when he was a challenger. Up in the air.

His challenges usually are sort of favorable if people are unhappy with the way things are. For Trump to be underwater doesn't help him, but unfortunately Biden right now is further underwater. So I agree, Trump's weakness remains real, and that's why the Democrat will have a chance against Trump, including Biden. Biden will have a reasonable chance against Trump.

I just think it's slightly under 50-50 now, and it could be much better than 50-50 if Biden chose to step aside. All right, two more things really quick. What do you say to the medium criticism part of this? And I don't love being a media critic. There's so much media out there. I think everybody's like, nobody's talking about this. And it's like, well, no, you're just not watching the right thing. But I think there is something to the fact that the mainstream media is feeling very obligated to go overboard and focusing that. Do you think that's a fair critique and that that's that is in some way creating a death spiral here a little bit for Biden? I think it's somewhat fair critique, and it's creating some problems for Biden.

It's worth calling the media on that. I think the media will adjust. I mean, once we have the real clarity, once the Haley thing in a way goes away, which is, I'm happy she's staying in there and causing a distraction. But once it really, really becomes Trump v. Biden, everyone will be reminded of Trump for six, seven months. And that's obviously Biden's best shot. All right. Ukraine, they're still dithering. Nothing's happening. The war is getting worse day in, day out. These guys are doing what? I don't know. Washing their hair in the House of Representatives. There seems to be absolutely no urgency. What's your sense of that at this point? No, just what you say, no sense of urgency. And even the good Republicans who are working quietly on a discharge petition,

Hakeem Jeffries is working on it, and then they're also pressuring Johnson, said the speaker. But I mean, this is important. Some I read last night might get this late in the month or at the beginning of April because there'll be another vehicle for it to move on. I just feel like it's the most important foreign policy moment since the end of the Cold War, and we're not approaching it with a sense of urgency. We should be. Biden will have the chance to talk about this in the State of the Union.

I do think that being able to reframe this and the immigration thing is an important opportunity for him later this week during the State of the Union, because I think that there are legitimate critiques you can level at Biden on the border, less legitimate ones you can level at him on Ukraine, but he did what you're supposed to do. There's a deal. There's been a deal. Worked with Republicans, worked with conservative Republicans, gave up stuff that Democrats don't like on the border. All liberals in California running for that Senate seat said they would be against the immigration bill because it was too harsh. Biden made the compromise, did what was needed, and now these guys are doing nothing because of Donald Trump. And I think that that's a worthwhile contrast.

Look, I think Biden, as the State of the Union, as people say, it's important. Always in Washington, it never really is, rarely is important. I think it is this week because he has a chance to obviously reassure some people and make the case strongly, I mean, and substantively. And then let's see if the White House and the campaign are also ready to really follow up in a serious way with paid advertising on something like the border and other issues. And then let's see if the special counsel, her, the guy who wrote that Biden was too old to, you know, have charged with other documents, what his testimony is like next week. It's actually a pretty important week when you think about it. But if you go through the State of the Union through her testimony next week,

we'll have a better sense in two weeks whether these polls are maybe the low watermark and maybe Biden will have some recovery or whether they really are, you low watermark and maybe I don't have some recovery, or whether they really are, you know, give us a sense of what's to come. All right. We'll be back talking about this next week. We will not be in denial. We will not be in denial. We'll be clear-eyed about the challenges and the threats and what we need to do to beat them. Up next, we've got Ben Wittes with a little bit on the Trump trials. See you on the other side. Thanks, Bill. Thanks, Tim. Hey, y'all, here's a simple but meaningful gift idea for your mom or dad or grandparent who lives

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So you can upload as many photos as you want, as often as you want. And mom or grandma can pick the perfect one. See why it was named the number one digital frame by Wirecutter, the strategist and Wired. Right now, you can save on the perfect present, one that keeps on giving, by visiting AuraFrames.com for a limited time. Listeners can get $20 off their best-selling frame with code BULWARK. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code BULWARK. Terms and conditions apply. All right, we are back with the man, the myth, the legend, Ben Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare, senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. He also writes Dog Shirt Daily on Subsect.

Is that a daily? Well, you know. It's daily-ish. The dog shirts are daily. I reserve the right to publish it at any moment. But on any given day, it may or may not appear. Got it. Though you're not in a dog shirt today, I might notice for our YouTube fans. Okay. We have breaking news from the Supreme Court. They have rejected Colorado's attempts to strip Donald Trump from the ballot in a unanimous

decision. What's your initial reaction to this? So this opinion will not remotely surprise anybody who listened to the oral argument at which the justices pretty uniformly expressed skepticism that a state can implement Section 3 of the 14th Amendment by enforcing against a federal presidential candidate through the ballot access process. They did seem to be a little bit divided about the specific mechanism of that idea, and that division is reflected in a five to four division on the court between people who frame the matter broadly and Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the three liberals who would frame it more narrowly. But by and large, this is exactly the opinion that I think everybody who listened to the oral argument expected from the court. Yeah, it seems like the narrow side of this, tell me if I'm wrong, but Sotomayor in particular,

and the other three, all the women justices, I guess I would notice, seemed to, just as a hypothetical matter, did not want to take away the possibility that somebody from January 6th, say someone that actually stormed the Capitol, was convicted, that runs for office in the future, they did not want this ruling to preclude that the 14th Amendment could apply to them. Is that essentially the breakdown? Yeah, and also I think more broadly did not want a holding that is broader than necessary to resolve this particular case, and this particular case required in their judgment only that the courts say a state can't exclude a federal presidential candidate on the basis of Section 3 without Congress getting involved somehow.

And the majority went further and said, there's a specific mechanism by which Congress needs to get involved. And they didn't buy that. It's not an unimportant question, but it's a pretty hypothetical question. And the broader point, as Justice Barrett points out in her little concurrence, is that nine of them agree on the disposition of this case, which is to say Trump wins. Do we have to say it like that? Trump wins? Could we say Jenna Griswold loses? How about that? That just stings a little less. Okay, so let's put it this way. All nine agree on the following proposition, which is we need to do the work and defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box. We do. Or the Senate needed to have done the work, and they let us the fuck down.

Right. So, you know, but unfortunately, that's in the past. So we need to do the work now. I've been agitating for that, as you know. Okay, let's talk about on that question about us needing to do the work. SCOTUS has agreed to take up the presidential immunity case. We've hashed that out a lot on the various bulwark platforms. George Conway seems to be the most optimistic about the prospects that this case might still come up in the fall and that Trump might find himself facing trial in the fall. Where are you on that timeline question? Just kind of the broader timeline about how these cases are going to shake out over the next few months. I know

that's something you wrote about for Dog Shirt kind of daily. So let's start with what we know for sure, which is that with a very high degree of probability, we can assume that on the 25th of this month, jury selection will begin in the Alvin Bragg, Stormy Daniels case in New York. So the first of the Trump criminal trials is actually happening, and it's happening soon. Everybody ignores it because this case can't get no respect, and there are some reasons good and bad for that. I've changed my view on that just as a standard. I'm giving this case respect. I've had a total flip on this, and I'm like, okay, fine, let's do it. Let's roll, all right? I'm ready to roll with Alvin Bragg. You know, the law is the

law, all right? I thought we were the law and order party. We are rolling. That case is happening. It's a longer conversation what the merits and demerits of it are i think there's more to be said for it than the commentary it has acknowledged but look it's happening that's the non relative non-variable well for people that are interested in your merits and demerits we'll have a bonus special ben whitish episode in april where we just do one hour on stormy Daniels. I'm going to be there for the trial, and I'm taking it seriously enough to go to it. So happy to do that. So now we get into the variables. There are three trials, and we don't know when any of them is going to happen. Here is what we know. The Supreme Court is going to hear this immunity case when it rules, and it will rule rejecting the claim of

immunity in one form or another. Judge Chutkan, who's presiding over the case, has said she will add what amounts to 88 days to the time she gets the mandate back before trial. Don't ask why 88 days, just trust me on that. So if they rule at the end of June and they don't require more litigation, which is another possibility, you could have at a minimum July, August, September, sometime in the September timeframe, maybe as early as August, depending if they rule a bit early, you could have a trial. I think that's a little bit optimistic, but George is not wrong that it's certainly possible. If their ruling requires more litigation, you'd push it off into the future. So that's variable case number one. Variable case number two is Judge Eileen Cannon's case in South Florida. This is, for me, the most frustrating because this is the of a case. And the Justice Department has now asked for

a trial date in July. Trump has asked for, you know, that New Yorker cartoon, Thursday doesn't work, how about never does never work for you? That's his brief in the, but he has this added like part, okay, if you can't do never, how about August? So I think we are likely to get a trial date in that case sometime in the summer, but it's not clear to me whether that trial date will be stable or whether Judge Cannon will push it back further. It seems like it should be very amenable to any appeals. You know, they look at some precedent from 1832, you know, some absurd filing, and then she's like, ooh, we're going to have to review this for a few months. You just alluded to what I think is her remarkable strategy, which is just if you don't rule on any motions, it becomes very hard to schedule a case. You have all this work that piles up,

and then you can write opinions about how complicated the case is. And, you know, the answer is, well, fucking rule on some motions, lady. That's not the way you're supposed to talk to federal judges. I kind of think, why not at this point? Can't we talk to Eileen Cannon like that? I'm okay with that. I just did. So the last one is the Fulton County case. And this one, which, you know, has been sidetracked on this crazy disqualification question, which required several weeks of litigation. That's now done. Judge McAfee, who is the opposite of Eileen Cannon, he's been working extremely hard and has a really, really tough job. He is going to issue a ruling in the next couple of weeks that will either

disqualify Fannie Willis, the DA, and thereby throw the case into permanent turmoil, maybe killing it altogether, or he will reject this motion, I think the latter, and set the case back on track. At that point, you might see a trial date scheduled. So why do you suspect that he will reject it? Similarly to the last time you were on this podcast, this is the one I'm not reading. I'm just choosing not to click on these articles because it brings me rage. So I'm not up to speed on the latest. Yeah. So I just want to say you're, you're making the wrong choice there, Tim.

Okay. This is the best reality show I have ever seen. It's better than the OJ Simpson case. I can't enjoy it. It's not a thing of beauty. It's like, just fuck anybody. You could fuck anybody.

It's fine with me, but like you have to do each other. Now we have to do this. And now this asshole, Mike Roman gets to like, have a smug look on his face about it. He's dragging you through the dirt and it's fine with me. But you have to do each other. Now we have to do this. And now this asshole Mike Roman gets to have a smug look on his face about how he's dragging you through the dirt and it's helping Donald Trump. And it just makes me so mad. I can't. I can't. So anyway, what's been happening? Well, what's been happening is there was a multi-day evidentiary hearing in which they gathered a lot of evidence. It was unflattering. And then they had arguments about it on Friday. It was a

three-hour oral argument. And my read of Judge McAfee, he's very hard to read because he's a real pro. But my best read of him is that he understands the gravity of a disqualification here and that he's likely to refer her to the bar for having maybe lied in his court, but he is unlikely to disqualify her. I want to say I could be very wrong about that, and I would not be altogether surprised to be wrong, but that's my read of his body language and the questions he was asking. Okay, back to the Jack Smith cases. From a scale of one to 10 on like a rage meter, what do you think Jack Smith's like level of rage is at this point and frustration at the calendar timing? And do you think that, you know, they are maintaining

optimism? Or do you think just kind of handicap that for us? Because to me, it's just like, if I was Jack Smith, I'd be ready to just kind of take somebody downtown with some MMA moves at this point. I think it's got to be very frustrating to them. The Supreme Court intervention here, you can look at it more or less cynically, but it is, whether you're cynical about it or deferential to their reasoning, it's extremely inconvenient for a prosecution that clearly feels about this case like getting him convicted before the election is an important preventive deterrent step to other election shenanigans and to other coups. And they look at this case clearly as like, okay, you're prosecuting a murderer to punish the past murderer, but also to prevent other murderers, right? You lock the guy up, you disable him from other

murders. I get that. But the timing, though, I mean, it's notable. I mean, they were able to turn around ruling in Colorado by today. What is happening that is taking so long? So that's the reason for cynicism. This is a much simpler case than Colorado. You could have affirmed summarily. You could have set a really expedited briefing schedule. And instead, you set a briefing schedule that Trump can win by

losing. And that's got to be very frustrating for them. The Eileen Cannon stuff is even more maddening because people think the Supreme Court is powerful, which it is in some grand sense, but there is nobody in the world more powerful than the district judge who has your case. And that is a horrible position to be in, to be before a judge who you can't catch a fair break from. And she has all but openly said she's in the tank for Trump. It's just got to be very, very, very frustrating for them. All right, Benjamin, I see you. You're dressed up. You're not in your hammock today. You're in a suit. You've got a Ukraine pin and a Ukraine flag behind you. Do you have any Ukraine activism updates for us before we let you go?

Well, I had a little run-in with the Capitol Police the other day. I projected on the Library of Congress to welcome Speaker Mike Johnson back and to urge him to pass the supplemental. And it took five minutes for the Capitol Police to show up and inform me that projecting on Capitol complex buildings was an arrest, no warning offense. So I shut it down and held out my hands to be arrested. And they said, no, we're not going to arrest you. Were you kind of secretly hoping to get arrested to raise attention for your efforts to the speaker? Or I assume maybe your wife was maybe not that excited about the possible handcuffs. I'm never hoping to be arrested. And I'm really not interested in making trouble for the Capitol Police. So I shut off the projector a moment after being ordered to and took it down to the Smithsonian, where the National Park Service police really don't care if you project on the Air and Space

Museum. And so I've decided that for Capitol Hill purposes, the Air and Space Museum and the Hirshhorn, which have these big windowless walls. They're really great, are my new projection location, because you get all the traffic for Independence Avenue. I'm excited for you, and I appreciate your activism for our friends in Ukraine. And the one thing this does call to mind is the grand theory of the case about January 6th about the deep state, about how it was an FBI op. I'm intrigued by the contrast between your story and the behaviors of the January 6th protesters, right? Because you would think that if it was an FBI sign-up and they didn't really want to

storm the Capitol, that when Capitol Police informed them that they should not do so, and when they reached the barricades, that they would have done what you did and listened and had respect to the Capitol Police, but they did not do that. So I do think that the behavior contrast is pretty noteworthy. Yeah. So I mean, jokes aside, in all seriousness, the Capitol Police are firm. They've got a serious set of problems to deal with, but they are not looking for trouble with anybody. And my interactions with them have been uniformly professional and excellent. They cited me chapter and verse on the reg that forbid the projection and they couldn't have been more gentlemen and gentle womanly about it. And so I

have kudos to the Capitol police and I will not be projecting on Capitol Hill just below it. They even told me where the line of their jurisdiction is. They said, if you stay on the other side of Third Street and don't project on Capitol buildings, we got no problem with you. Well, we're going to send this tape to our friends in the January 6th choir, because in all seriousness, this is what you're supposed to do. I was making a joke, but also being serious. And fortunately, frankly, some of the insurrectionists have experienced the accountability of their actions of not listening to our friends at the Capitol Police. Ben Wittes, sounds like you're going to be back a bunch in April. You're going to be for podcast correspondent in New York City for the Alvin Bragg trial.

I will be there for the trial or for at least for much of it. And I'm happy to join you guys anytime. All right. Appreciate it, Ben. Want to talk to you soon brother yep take care all right thanks so much to ben with us and bill crystal we'll be back tomorrow see y'all then it's worth the try the board podcast is produced by katie cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.