The Bulwark Podcast - Michael Kruse: Trump's Grand Finale

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

As a longtime legal combatant, probably no one else on earth is more prepared to leverage four prosecutions than Donald Trump—he's made an art form of attacking the courts, our justice system, and the rule of law for 50-plus years. Politico's Michael Kruse joins Charlie Sykes. show notes: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/12/donald-trump-indictments-legal-system-00135151 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/22/new-hampshire-primary-voter-00136850 

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Happy New Hampshire Primary Day for those of you who celebrate. I don't want to have any spoilers here because, you know, New Hampshire is notorious for upending predictions, for being unpredictable. But I think it's pretty clear that we are sometime either today or very short late to learn something that we've already known, which is that the party of Ronald Reagan is dead, demised, departed, and no more. This is Nikki Haley's last stand. Of course, you're up for another 48 hours of punditizing about the importance of all of this, but I want to take a little bit of a step back today because there is an absolute mind-bender of a story that I wanted to talk about, and we are joined by the author of that piece, Michael Cruz, senior staff writer at Politico and Politico Magazine.

Now, this story, Michael, first of all, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Charlie. Good to be with you again. This story with the headline, this to him is the grand finale. Donald Trump's 50 year mission to discredit the justice system. So, I mean, this is mainly about Trump. But you also did a couple of interviews with voters up in New Hampshire. But this piece, and I really hope that people set aside some time to read it, because you start off with something that I think most

people are familiar with, what happened in room 300 of the New York County Courthouse in Manhattan in November, where Donald Trump strutted, dominated, took over the proceedings. The judge was left to say, you know, can't anyone control him and nobody could control him. But as you point out, I'm going to just read a little bit of what you wrote here, because every sentence is kind of like a hammer blow. The prosecutor says at one point, are you done? And Trump says, done. As you write, he was nowhere close to done. Trump's testimony, if anything, was but a taste. In fact, he said many of the same things in the same courtroom last Thursday. This country, you write, has never seen and

therefore is utterly unprepared for what it is about to endure in the wrenching weeks and months ahead. Active challenges based on post-Civil War constitutional amendments to bar insurrectionists from the ballot, existentially important questions about presidential immunity almost certain to be decided by a U.S. Supreme Court the citizenry has seldom trusted less, and a candidate running for the White House while facing four separate criminal indictments alleging 91 felonies, among them, of course, charges that he tried to overturn an election he lost and overthrow the democracy he swore to defend. And while many found Trump's conduct in court in New York shocking, it is, in fact, for Trump, not shocking at all. For Trump, it is less an aberration

than an extension, an escalation, a culmination. Trump has never been in precisely this position, and the level of the threat that he faces is inarguably new, but it's just as true, too, that nobody has been preparing for this as long as he has himself. So, Michael, you go through this long, long history of Donald Trump's manipulation of the justice system, his weaponization of the justice system, and how Trump over many decades has taught himself how to use and abuse the legal system for his own advantage. You're right, he has spent most of his adult life molding it into an arena in which he could stake claims and hunt leverage. It has not been for him a place of last resort so much as a place of constant quarrel. Conflict in courts is not for him. The cost of doing business is how he does business. So this is

the revelation is that we think, you know, boy, Donald Trump, this must be tough. Donald Trump is in the dock. But talk to me about Donald Trump's attitude toward court and what you learned in your research about the way he handles these things. I mean, so first of all, as I say, also in the piece, he's never been in precisely this situation, like the level of peril he faces is something new. But the way he's responding to it and the tactics he's using to attack it, to address it, to try to get past it, to try to get past November are not new at all. And it's important, I think, for the people of this country to understand that there are many ways to see Donald Trump, of course. years, a legal combatant who's learned over the course of those years and decades and has been quite effective at this. When folks sort of wonder out loud and have been wondering for months, for years really, why doesn't accountability happen? Why doesn't the legal system catch up

to him? And the answer is in those 50 years, is in the lessons he's learned. And also just the reality that he is, as I say in the text of the story, more prepared to deal with this sprawling multi-jurisdiction situation than maybe literally anybody on planet earth, because of how he has interacted with the legal system as a defendant, as a plaintiff, on offense, on defense, as a businessman, as a citizen for 50 plus years. You have a lot about Roy Cohn, the legendary lawyer that Donald Trump admired so much, you know, one of the sleaziest characters in American history, as you point out, one of the sleaziest characters in legal history, but really very much a mentor for Donald Trump. And I love the way you describe it, that when he faced his first legal

problem, he went out and he hired Roy Cohn, then he looked for his own Roy Cohn, and then he became Roy Cohn. So talk to me about that, that trajectory. You cannot understand Donald Trump without understanding Roy Cohn and without understanding their relationship. The first time I wrote about Roy Cohn in the context of Donald Trump was in the spring of 2016. So by now, I sort of found myself thinking, well, this is just a fact of the matter that people understand about Donald Trump. But this story, the sort of found myself thinking, well, this is just a fact of the matter that people understand about Donald Trump. But this story, the reporting of this story, the reception of this story sort of reminded me that actually even very well-informed peoples, I don't think have totally understood and internalized just how important this is to understand Donald Trump. Roy Cohn, in late 1973, was in some sense sort

of at the peak of his perverse powers. He had been brought into court. He had been charged four times, four indictments. He had been acquitted three times, mistrial the other time, but nonetheless never convicted. And so by this time, by the early to mid 70s, not only was he this notorious former aid and attorney to Senator Joseph McCarthy. That's where he became famous back in the 50s as a red baiter. So this is his second or third chapter. Famous and infamous in the 50s. And for most people, that would be sort of a stain that you'd go back and you'd have some private practice, but you basically go into more or less life, right? Yeah, he turned it into a strength, an asset. He turned the infamy into power, which is now a familiar Trump trait as well. 1973, when the federal government, when the DOJ charges Donald Trump and his father with racist rental practices, Roy Cohn had added even to that infamy as a sheen of invincibility, an ability to get out of things, to get away with stuff. And so this was among the many reasons he

was so attractive to a young 27-year-old Donald Trump at the time. As I say in the piece, that years-long effort to fight back and for all intents and purposes, get out of the DOJ race case of 1973 was a foundational tutorial in how to fight back against the legal system and to use that system to work within it, not just fight against it. And also Roy Cohn 101 is what that was for Donald Trump. And so on the list of Roy Cohn 101, deny, counterattack, delay. In some ways, that might be the most important thing, especially right now in the current context. And all along the way, undermine the system.

Because if a larger portion of, at that time, newspaper readers have questions about the propriety of the prosecution, well, then you're winning a little bit in the court of public opinion. And so Donald Trump, without understanding Roy Cohn and without understanding that first marriage of Donald Trump and Roy Cohn in the early to mid 70s, and in fact, well into the late 70s, because they stretched it out for so very long to the point where the federal government basically said, just threw up its hands and said, we'll take what we can get and move on because- A consent decree. Get a dissent decree, which is legally and officially a loss for the Trump.

Right, right, right. It didn't register as such, and certainly they didn't treat it as such, and that's not how they talked about it and still talk about it. Well, this is the other thing you point out, is the way that he spins defeats into victories. Even when he loses, he turns into a victory. But let's just stay with Roy Cohn for a moment because this is, you know, I think just sort of fundamental to understand. You know, as you pointed out, that Cohn was in post-World War II America, a particular sort of poisonous force, you know, decades before he encountered Donald Trump, but also the kind of lawyer that he was. He had this reputation as a legal executioner for celebrities, executives, mob bosses. He didn't pay his bills. He didn't pay his taxes. He was shameless and remorseless and famous among lawyers for winning cases by delays,

evasions, and lies. He was indicted four times for bribery, conspiracy, extortion, blackmail, for stock swindling and obstruction of justice and filing forced reports, never once convicted. He was known as a scoundrel, a bully, and as politically incorrect as they come. And as you point out, Trump loved this guy. Trump loved this guy, modeled himself on this guy, and keeps talking about this guy to this day. Elemental to understanding Donald Trump is understanding that Roy Cohn didn't think the rules applied to him. The rules were and are for suckers. They are to be manipulated. What are the loopholes that can be manipulated, identified, and taken advantage of? This is the way Roy Cohn approached not only his law practice, but life itself. There was no separation between Roy Cohn's life, his work, and just the story he spun.

And so all of this, it goes even beyond legal maneuverings, understanding how to take advantage of courts and judges and undermine the system itself it is it is a way of being that roy cone was and he imparted that right young impressionable and savvy donald trump he was paying attention he was before he became roy cone he was roy cone's finest and most attentive pupil well i mean, again, you go back to this playbook, I know it's an overused term, but you go back to this 1973 DOJ lawsuit about racism, and all of the stuff that we're seeing now, Roy Cohn accusing prosecutors of Gestapo-like tactics, using undercover agents, stormtroopers, claiming everything was a smear campaign, all of this stuff.

So the attack, attack, attack, no matter what the merits were, that evidence did not matter. As you point out, when one attorney told you that Trump learned attack, attack, attack, no matter what the merits are, fuck the merits, attack, attack, attack. That was Roy Cohn's methodology. That was adopted by Donald Trump. So no one should be surprised to see those tactics in every one of the cases that is pending against Donald Trump. So tell me why you started with the scene in Judge Nguyen's courtroom, because I think some people thought this is, you know, this is out of control, Donald Trump, this is Donald Trump, you know, strutting and

having tantrums. But you saw him as this was the Donald Trump that was 50 years in the making in that courtroom. Why did you start with that particular episode? Some of the commentary, the mainstream commentary in the aftermath of that hearing that day in early November in New York, I thought was off base and naive. You can't do that in a courtroom. This is not a winning posture in a courtroom. And I thought, you're still not understanding this. This is not something he's doing for legal reasons per se. When the judge said, this is not a political rally, this is a quorum, I thought to myself, you're right, I guess, technically, but this is very obviously a different location, but a version of any rally or set of remarks that you see him deliver anywhere. The last however many nights

in New Hampshire, the next however many nights in Nevada and South Carolina and so on and so forth. This is serving a purpose and he might be losing legally in some respects. He's already lost that case. The only question when he is testifying in the way that he was, what is the punishment in that particular civil fraud trial? He's already lost, quote unquote, legally, but he is, at least in my estimation, potentially, maybe even probably winning politically because the coverage of that event, and again, that's not even televised. I mean, that is coming out in terms of, I think it's of coverage, because of things that people who are in the courtroom like me are writing about it. That's how it's coming out. That delivers the message that he not only wants to deliver right now, needs to deliver right now, but is an extension of a message he's been delivering ever since that first case in 1973. If enough people simply do not trust that system, agree with what he's

saying about the judge and the prosecutor and the attorney general and the case, then mission accomplished for Donald Trump, because how do you beat this array of legal actions and peril? You get to November without having been convicted and you are reelected because enough people believe you and not believe the system. And he is, in a sense, nothing if not prepared to make that case. A case he's making on a daily basis, of course. So tell me about some of these other trials that he's had in the past. The lawsuit with Tim O'Brien, who's been on this podcast, you've had other class action suits. I love the stories about his suits around Mar-a-Lago, how he basically brings people to heel. He's been in court with, you know, tenants associations. So pick out one of those cases that you think is

also part of the development of the Trump legal persona as we're tracing him from 1973 and Roy Cohn to where we are right now. So, I mean, any of these, any of the chapters that I outline in the piece are worth discussing, but I guess I'd go to the 80s because that is foundational to in a slightly different way than the 70s. For starters, he's on offense. This is no longer playing defense and learning from Roy Cohn and kind of an almost embryonic stage of the development of Donald Trump's role as a legal combatant. He now is taking it to people on offense using courtrooms and court proceedings to try to get what he wants. And so the signal ongoing legal squabble in the 1980s, and even this has been a little bit underwritten about, is not necessarily known or remembered by even people who have been paying

lots of attention to Donald Trump since he came down the escalator, right? He buys 100 Central Park South, a 15-story apartment building, rent-controlled tenants, great location, obviously, and wants to turn it into a much fancier, much more high-priced condominium. He needs those people out. He needs the rent control tenants out. So he goes about various legal ways to try to get them out. They fight back. They hire very capable tenants, right, attorneys. A stalemate ensues to the point where Donald Trump now, at a time where Trump Tower is just going up, he's on the cover of GQ for the first time. And there's very early famous Donald Trump. He just bought the USFL generals. This is the context in which he is operating. And he files

suit, a racketeering suit, a RICO suit against the attorneys to try to intimidate those attorneys into just saying, this is not worth it. And lesser attorneys come in and the tenants are more vulnerable and he gets what he wants. And so what happens is the attorneys have to hire an attorney, even then a very well established, high-powered attorney named Marty London in New York, and just legally beat the pants off Donald Trump. And there is no, the judges sort of fast-track dismissals. There is no appeal to the point where Trump has to pay $700,000 of legal fees in return. He in some sense is punished by the judges for even having brought the suit.

Not only does he lose the suit, he loses the suit and then some. But it was so loathe and so frivolous. And yet, fast forward a few years and obviously the 80s, the financial market boomed, the real estate market boomed, and this property he still has, stymied though he was, is now worth a lot more. And eventually those tenants move out and 100 Central Park South becomes a building that still is called Trump Park. So he spins that as a win too. And he spins it as a win by the early 90s. He's spinning that as a win, well, they did me a favor by holding me up. So now this building is more important. And so in some sense, he's not wrong. I mean, an outright legal defeat, I mean, a humiliating smackdown of a legal defeat, but somehow he's able to spin it to himself

and also spin it to the public as a sign of some sort of business acumen rather than a frivolous legal action brought great sanctions. Very much on brand. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I want to pull the lens back in a moment, because you talk about the 50-year campaign to discredit the whole justice system. But one more question, though, because we're talking about the lawyers, his familiarity with the legal system, wanting to be aggressive. How then do we reconcile someone whose image is, in his role model, is Roy Roy Cohn with the fact that right now he's in court with somebody of the legal level of Alina Haba, who I think it's safe to say is not one of the giants of the legal profession. Yeah. How does that fit into this scenario?

Because he's had good lawyers in the past. Yeah. A lot of those good lawyers are he's shedding those lawyers and now he's got Alina Haba. Increasing as we've seen over the years, it's become harder and harder for him to get the best attorneys. Let me play off the notion that he is his own Roy Cohn. He thinks and has thought for a long time that he's his own best advocate. And so we're speculating here a little bit, but Alina Haba is not so much there for her legal expertise or experience. She's there to be a more camera-faced, outside-on-the-court-steps attack dog in his back. Inside the courtroom, frankly, Donald Trump is more equipped to do what he needs to do to get the message across that he wants to get across. He had trouble finding another Roy Cohn because there was and only ever has been one Roy Cohn.

There is no other Roy Cohn, right? Well, also lawyers like to get paid, right? I mean, lawyers like to get paid. I mean, throw that into the mix for why a lot of the best attorneys have found reasons to not represent him increasingly over the last however many years. That's a well-earned reputation over decades that he not only stiffs contractors, but also stiffs his own attorneys. Your whole piece takes the step back and says, this is a 50-year mission to discredit the justice system. And that's one of the stakes in 2024. His goal is not just to win these cases or escape these cases. It is to discredit the system. And that's one of the stakes in 2024. His goal is not just to win these cases or escape these cases. It is to discredit the system. And you quote Paul Rosenzweig, who was a senior

counsel during the investigation of Bill Clinton. He was assistant deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. I think we know his name. And he says, look, this year's election is not just a referendum on Donald Trump. This election, he told you, is a referendum on the rule of law. And it's interesting, as I was reading your piece, and I think, you know, there's kind of this template that, you know, democracy is on the ballot, democracy is on the ballot. But as you read what Donald Trump is doing and how this year is going to play out, it is, I think, in some ways more accurate to say that this year is going to be the referendum on the justice system and on the rule of law and whether or not that rule of law's credibility will be irreparably damaged. Yeah. The two things are connected. Many would argue that

if a certain portion of the population no longer trusts the system, which is to say, in a material way, no longer abides by decisions of the system, you're that much closer to chaos. The center does not hold without that kind of baseline shared reality. When a judge or a jury says a thing, it means what it means, and we abide by the consequences. If Donald Trump manages to skirt accountability that a jury decides is necessary and justified, then almost by definition, rule of law, at the very very least is damaged, if not mortally wounded, right? And so I think the scariest part of this idea that this election is a referendum on the rule of law is a notion that I heard repeatedly in the reporting of the story that to some extent, this referendum is done. We've already made this decision.

There has been enough damage inflicted over the last however many years, even if he's not reelected, even if he is convicted, we still will have a long road to repair that shared faith that we need to have for the sustenance of democracy in this country or any. I think there's going to be a long tail on all of this, which sort of brings us to, you know, where we're at in terms of the politics. So your article was published before the Iowa caucuses, and you talked to people in Iowa about all of this, and you were able to find, you know, the degree of damage, I think, for the justice system. So talk to me about how this is actually playing.

You know, you're talking about, you know, people have this intensely strong belief in Donald Trump, even from a prison cell. You had people tell you they would vote for Donald Trump, even if he was a convicted felon and in a prison cell. These were not other Republican candidates for president. These were actual voters. Right. Because, I mean, they've already said, you know, raised their hand here in Milwaukee, right? That they would still support him. But how does this work? What has Donald Trump done to his own electorate? There's unanimity in what I heard from voters in Iowa. I went on purpose to his rally in a place called Waterloo and made it my business to talk to as many people as I could about this very thing. Basically, will you trust the system if the system says he's guilty and

can't be elected president or shouldn't be elected president? And what I found was that to a person, trust in the justice system and the system overall, our shared governance, the all-time low. I'm not extrapolating from what people said. It's literally what they said, we trust Trump, we don't trust the system. And so I don't know how that works going forward, regardless of what happens in November. If a significant chunk of the electorate thinks that way, we are in a bad way. No matter what happens in the coming weeks, months, years, you need those people to be at least somewhat back in the fold, if that's quite the right way to put it. And on the one hand, totally unsurprising to

me. We've been watching this for however many years now. I've been to however many Trump rallies. I've talked to many, many voters. I find it fascinating. I find it very useful and helpful. In addition, it's sort of obligatory given my job. But on on the one hand wasn't totally shocking to me. On the other, it's very jarring and dispiriting and it can't be. I mean, I don't want to be too sort of hard and fast or sound hyperbolic, but this can't be if we are going to continue to be the country we've been for nearly 250 years. You can't have this number of people who think this way. You cannot. It is incompatible with the continuation, with the sustenance of democratic governance. As I was thinking through this, you know, there's always the temptation to find some large systemic or cultural or sociological explanation for things. And there has been a decline in, you know,

in the credibility of elites and everything. But it's hard to escape the conclusion that so much of this is the singular damage done by Donald Trump. And you write about this. These people who do not trust the system, they trust Trump. And that's because Trump's told them, told them to for 50 years. He started doing this in the 70s, teaming with Cohen, accusing the government of gaslapo-like tactics and smears. He started doing this in the 70s, teaming with Cohn, accusing the government of gaslapo-like tactics and smears. He kept doing it in the 80s, always playing the victim of Central Park South, claiming people were out to get him, using the courts to do it. Trump told the Times, is not going to get harassed. And then one case after another. And you talked to Judge Ludig about this, Judge Michael Ludig, who has been an icon of conservative jurisprudence.

And he told you it is of surpassing importance what happens, but that still doesn't change the fact that he's already laid waste to our democracy and to our elections and to the rule of law. And he's already laid waste to it. So in some ways, I mean, that's the real jarring thing, isn't it, Michael? Is that we keep thinking, well, you know, we will get the outcome sometime later, but the damage is all around us. Yeah, Judge Lee was particularly pointed and maybe even more pessimistic than many others, but assessment certainly isn't out of line with what I heard from many, many people in the courts reporting this story. I think it's important just

to understand and to remember that, you know, Donald Trump, the damage he has done, yes, but he also exists in a continuum of trust in institutions for a wide variety of reasons. There's been going down also for 50 years or more, right? And so all sorts of explanations for that. But I do think like Donald Trump in a person is singularly effective at undermining the trust that people have in these systems because he doesn't have the trust in these systems or he sees that not having trust and stoking lack of trust in the systems is a very useful way to achieve what he wants, whether that was in business, whether it's in politics, all of the above. And so here we are. And I think what Judge Ludig was saying is that even if in his perspective, sort of best case scenario and Judge Ludig was saying is that even if in his perspective,

sort of best case scenario, and Judge Ludig's perspective, best case scenario is obviously he's convicted and he loses, like both those things happen. He's convicted somehow and he loses reelection, maybe by a margin that cannot be messed with in the way that he's messed with 2020, obviously. That for Judge Ludig, I think we need to put words in his mouth, in his best case scenario, based on our conversations. Even then, for him, there is a massive amount of repair work to be done to our democracy that may or may not be doable in due time because of the level of damage that has been building over time, but certainly exacerbated in his mind by one person, by the former president, Donald Trump.

Let's shift to the piece that you published just a couple of days ago about voters in New Hampshire. Let's talk about Ted Johnson. I was rereading a DM thread, and somebody that you and I both know said that reading your profile of Ted Johnson sucked his soul out of his body. It was so depressing. So tell me about Ted Johnson and why he thinks our system needs to be broken and Donald Trump is the man to do it. Who's Ted Johnson? Ted Johnson is a 58-year-old retired soldier, an unaffiliated voter. He was in the army for 22 years, retired as a lieutenant colonel. He works in IT. He's a senior project manager for an IT company. And he's very angry. I know Ted because I was at a Nikki Haley town hall back in September in New Hampshire. He

got up and asked a question. He asked Nikki Haley, how can she help bring us back together as a country? And subsequent conversations with Ted, in those conversations, I learned that part of the reason he asked that question, that he's been estranged from his brother, his older brother, Fred, Fred Johnson, who lives in Kentucky, also a retired soldier. And the estrangement, lots of reasons for family fights, family separations, but that rift was widened by the rise of Trump. Ted is very pro-Trump, Fred, very anti-Trump. This has not helped with their relationship. And so I worked Fred and Ted into that Nikki Haley piece back in September, maybe it ran in October. I've kept in touch with both Ted and Fred periodically ever since. And that is how I ended up spending three and a half hours with Ted the other day in New Hampshire when I was up there doing some reporting heading into the primary. And I wanted to spend time with Ted because he had sent me a text not too long ago saying he had decided not to go with Nikki Haley, but to go with Trump

and not just go back to Trump, but go back to Trump with like a real purpose and with a sense of vengeance even. I mean, so he's gone from wanting to pull us together to, no, I want to pull us apart. I want to blow things up. Literally in September, he got up and said, how do we pull this back together? And literally the other day to me, he said, I want him to pull it apart. I want to blow things up. Literally in September, he got up and said, how do we pull this back together? And literally the other day to me, he said, I want him to pull it apart. And so how do you, in four and a half months, make that journey? The premise of the piece, for me, the premise of just the curiosity, I didn't know it was going to turn into quite what it was, but I wanted to know maybe in that journey, in that experience, in that evolution that you see in Ted Johnson over the last four months, we can better understand not only the dynamics of the New Hampshire primary, but frankly, the dynamics of the current American political moment, this perilous moment in which we find ourselves.

And so I think Ted Johnson, like, yes, he is but one voter, but I think he's incredibly important to try to understand. Okay, so how did it happen? How did he go from bring us together to I am so pissed, I am so angry that I want to tear it all apart? Is the right word radicalized or what embittered him? What angered him so much? Let me answer it that way. He started to lose interest in Nikki Haley, partly coaxed on by his content, his media diet, Fox News

and other sources of that sort. He also has a subscription to the Wall Street Journal. He's not just sort of in that right-wing silo. But I think subtly, the attack lines from those media outlets, in some sense from Trump and the Trump campaign too, on Nikki Haley over the course of the last few months, they were effective. She's a corporatist. She's a swamp creature, business as usual. Yeah, business as usual. She's a swamp creature, two interventionists with Ukraine, et cetera, et cetera, corporatist, all these things that sort of sound familiar. If you listen to Donald Trump, if you listen to Fox News, et cetera, et cetera. But beyond that, and I think even maybe more to the point, I think Ted is far, far from alone on this front. The indictments bothered him a lot. And we can argue about sort of the distance and whether or not this should be the case, but it is the case. And I've talked to many people over the course of

the last couple of months in Trump settings, this made them angry that they are going after him. The more he was indicted, the more he's in court, and the more he's saying what he's saying in court, the more they are rallying to or back to him to defend him. They feel somehow that the persecution of him, and that's certainly the way they see this, is a persecution of them. Talk to me about what he thinks happened on January 6th. I mean, how does he process January 6th? Well, it's interesting. That changed over time.

At first, and this is in the piece, first he thought January 6th was bad. This isn't good. But? First, he thought January 6th was bad. This isn't good. But over time, though, it became his opinion that this was a setup, that the Democratic Party, that Nancy Pelosi, that the various federal bureaucracies were somehow involved in setting this up, staging this, making it seem worse than it actually was to undermine Donald Trump. And so I think Ted is very representative, for better or for worse, in this regard. This is how he came to see it with some help in his informational sphere. It was no longer an attack on democracy and the sanctity of an election. It was a peaceful protest in the people's house. And who beat up the cops? Who committed the act? I'm always fascinated by these guys, how they process that, because we actually have pictures. You can see them with your eyes.

Does he think that was Antifa? Does he think that it was a false flag? What does he think? Dark forces, dark anti-Trump forces dark uh swamp like forces are some there aren't specific answers because there aren't specific answers to this right i mean but this sense this is set up so he also thinks and this is interesting because uh he thinks that trump is a pig and a womanizer but he thinks but he's a leader and he gets in there he's a leader. And if he gets in there, he's going to do stuff. What's the main stuff he wants this pig and womanizer to do that he really, really likes? Well, this stuff now for Ted Johnson is break the system. And the system needs to be broken because the system doesn't look after average guys like him.

What does that mean for him, though? What is the system that he wants broken that will do something for guys like him well if the system is out for elitists if the system is out people who aren't him then the system is in his mind by definition not for him and not for people like him i mean keep in mind i don't write that story at all to be judgmental of ted johnson i want to understand i want people to understand. I'm trying, yeah. Ted Johnson is, and always has been in my interactions with him,

an engaging conversationalist, like kind of an interesting guy. I mean, we spent three and a half hours together the other day and two people talking because I want to understand how he thinks and why and what he wants. Do you think you do though? I mean, I'm trying to

imagine that looking the guy in the eyes, he's intelligent, he's experienced and everything. And I'd be going, what is going on in there? What is the process? Do you think you decoded it or is it still mysterious to you? I mean, I guess to that question, I would just sort of point people to read the story. It's not my role to sort of, I don't think, to extrapolate kind of a judgmental takeaway from my interactions with Ted Johnson. It is to present Ted Johnson, I think, accurately and accurately represent his views and how he's come to his views and therefore what that means for us as a country and as an electorate. And so, you know, I leave that to others, but I think Ted Johnson, and for that matter, Ted and Fred, I've been in touch with Fred too, certainly going into the story. And since

the story ran, I think you could tell without getting too sort of off on a detour, I think you could tell the story of the United States of America over the last hundred years through the story of the Johnsons of Centralia. And maybe I will, it's a hell of a race, but I think it's incredibly important for us to try to understand, if possible, without our particular biases and judgment, a guy like Ted Johnson, because there are many Ted Johnsons. Back to the beginning of our conversation about your piece, this is to him as the grand finale, Donald Trump's 50-year mission to discredit the justice system. As you point out, the thing that really stuck with me was the fact that, you know, we are not prepared for this. Nothing has prepared the country for what's about to happen. And here it is. I mean, we're getting

on the roller coaster right now. Stakes could not be higher. And Donald Trump may be prepared, but as you point out, he's never faced this kind of legal danger. So, you know, he's managed to skirt everything or turn defeats into victories. What if, what happens if Donald Trump actually confronts a court and a jury that convicts him of felonies. Does he have anything in his playbook for that? Is he prepared for being a convicted felon? It's a hard thing to answer. All I can say is pass this prologue. I have, for better or for worse, mined his history for the last going on a decade, right? And there are some great Trump truths. You know, sometimes I put it like,

Trump will, Trump will, Trump. You know, Trump does a handful of things. He responds to certain situations in certain ways. And one of those things, one of those great Trump truths is he cannot lose. As we've seen, he cannot ever. And so if he loses in a court of law, if he is convicted in a DC federal case, there will be some version of what we've seen many times, a concerted effort to make it something other than a loss.

What form will that take? TBD, if that's where we get. He has supporters. He has a swath of the country to use in ways that I think might be this by now familiar combination of shocking and not shocking at all. I mean, it's hard to say, and it's like borderline irresponsible to go too far sort of in this speculative way. But I think what he's done in the past, and that's what he does in situations like the one you're describing. And we could get to a place, too speculative as I say, but we could get to a place where he is convicted, but he's not yet sentenced. I mean, there's lots

of ifs, ands, or buts even between here and there. If the key thing is that he can never lose, he can never be defeated. I mean, that's the fundamental template to which we have to see everything through that lens. He will never concede defeat or conviction. Will never. Will never. I mean, this is not that I don't think I'm going on a limb here and being too speculative. Because he has never.

No, not at all. What that exactly means, if and when that happens that I don't think I'm going on a limb here and being too speculative, like because he has never. No, not at all. What that exactly means, if and when that happens, I don't know. We will see if we get to that point. It's fair to say that whatever happens, whatever happens, it will be incredibly destabilizing. I don't think the country, I mean, you and I understand this. The listeners of your podcast probably understand this. But I don't think many people, even otherwise educated, engaged people, coast to coast, totally yet understand what we're about to do.

Potentially starting tomorrow, right? Like we're already into it. But if in effect, the primary process is over, the general election starts tomorrow. And the general election is not going to look like any general election we have ever remotely experienced in this country. It is going to run through almost certainly this courtroom and that courtroom, it's going to run through courts up to the Supreme Court. Yes, there will be sort of standard issue set pieces that we've come to see as wallpaper in presidential election years. Sure. But like that is almost not even the primary campaign trail. And it's hard to follow even for somebody like me. It is hard and harder

to follow that and understand it and grapple with the stakes than it is to say, ah, there's another press conference, the Democratic nominee and the Republican nominee, and we do the conventions and all these things that feel rote. Let's cover it as if it's vaguely normal. Not only is this not normal, it is utterly unprecedented. We've never done it this way, obviously. And that is going to be incredibly complicated and destabilizing in the best of circumstances. And that might start in earnest tomorrow. Yeah. No, I think that's true. Michael Cruz is senior staff writer at a political and political magazine. His piece, This to Him, is the grand finale, Donald Trump's 50-year mission

to discredit the justice system, an absolute must read. Michael, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and talking to us about this. I appreciate it very much. Thank you as always, Charlie. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow and we'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.