The Bulwark Podcast - Will Saletan: Individual 1 Gets His Day in Court

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Trump always calls for his enemies to get prosecuted and now he's getting a taste of his own medicine. But will he get to skip the mugshot? Plus, Fox's horrific day in court, and did 60 Minutes help normalize MTG ? Will Saletan is back with Charlie Sykes for Charlie and Will Monday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Good morning and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. It is Monday. It is Holy Week. So appropriate that Donald Trump would be flying back to New York the day after Palm Sunday. You can just imagine all the the MAGA world symbolism there. And because it's Monday, I'm joined once again by my colleague, Will Salatan. This is two days in a row because you were on our special indictment podcast on Friday. I'll be here every day Trump gets indicted. So, you know, hey, we could have three or four more of these. There may be three or four more of those. So, you know, where do we actually start today? Let's start with some dueling polls that are out there. We had the initial polls from Yahoo News and YouGo showing Trump's support just skyrocketing among Republicans. Trump now holds a 26-point lead over Ron DeSantis, 57 to 31 percent in the GOP primary, up from just eight points two weeks ago.

So obviously, this is kind of rocket fuel for Donald Trump when it comes to seizing the Republican nomination. But what is good for Donald Trump is not necessarily good for the Republican Party. And we have this new poll out this morning. And you know, take all polls with a grain of salt. And by the way, Will, didn't I promise I wasn't going to be doing this poll stuff when we talk about it? I mean, didn't I actually say I wasn't going to do the poll stuff? But Charlie, no one believes you when you say that. I know, I just I get dragged back. So here's the new CNN poll showing that 60% of Americans, including 60% of independents, say they approve of the indictment of Trump, which is interesting because, of course, we haven't seen the indictment of Trump, which we ought to emphasize repeatedly during today's

podcast. While views on the indictment of Trump, which we ought to emphasize repeatedly during today's podcast. While views on the indictment are predictably split along party lines, the poll finds that majorities across major demographic divides all approve of the decision to indict the former president. 62% of women, 58% of men approve. Racial and ethnic groups, 82% of black adults, 71% of Hispanic adults, 51% of white adults along generational lines, 69% under the age of 35 approve of the decision to indict Trump, 62% age 35, 49, 53% aged 50 to 64, and 54% of 65 and older. Also, education levels, 68% of college-educated voters approve, 56% with some college or less. And yet, it seems pretty obvious Republicans bought the ticket here. I mean, they are all in on Donald Trump. I suppose there's nothing surprising about that. So what do you make of this moment where Donald Trump seems to be having the

wind at his back, at least in Republican primary circles? He's raised $5 million since the word came out. So what do you think, Will? Okay, a couple of things. First of all, let's just pause and reflect on the obvious glaring self-contradiction in the Republican message about the politics of this indictment, right? Well, yeah. Point one, they say, you indicted Trump, you libs, you left-wing prosecutors, federal, state, whatever, whoever indicts Trump, you did it to hurt him, right? This was targeting him, it's election interference, you're trying to destroy him. Point two, this indictment is only helping Trump. You did it to hurt him, right? This was targeting him. It's election interference. You're trying to destroy him. Point two, this indictment is only helping Trump, right? So there's this obvious contradiction in the message. That's the first thing I would point out. And they do it without any shame at all. But the second thing I want to say about this is that we're in just the very early stage of this process because a lot of people in these polls, all they know

is that Trump has been indicted by a DA. They might know a little bit about the case. So a lot of this Republican rallying around Trump is just based on the idea that he's being targeted, attacked, that he's somehow the victim of this prosecution. Not a lot of focus at this point on the details of the charges. So as we go further into this process, not a lot of focus at this point on the details of the charges. So as we go further into this process, where there's going to be more presentation of the evidence against Trump, the details, the substance of the case is going to wear down to some extent the support for Trump inside the party. Elite Republicans are cowards. They're rallying around Trump because they think this is going to help them with the

Republican base. But there's going to be some wear and tear on support for Trump at the base level. I think that's probably true. I mean, there's going to be more exhaustion, whether it's the base level or not, but certainly among the general electorate. It's important to keep separating out the MAGA base from the normal Republican base versus the general election base out there. You can argue all day long that this indictment helps Donald Trump, but it doesn't help

him win over swing voters. It doesn't help him win over independent voters. Not a lot of voters out there who are going to look at an indictment of Donald Trump and think, you know, I didn't support him the first two times, but now I need to give this guy a look. The other thing is that with each subsequent indictment, I think the peril grows and the severity grows. But let me see whether you agree with me or not. The Republicans were embracing Trump after his first indictment are going to have a hard time breaking with him on the second indictment or the third or maybe even the fourth. I mean, they're kind of stuck with it, right? Their fear of the base, their willingness to attack the prosecutors, it's going to be tested over and over again.

I mean, I guess my assumption is that their default setting will be to keep doing the same thing over and over again, even though I think it's horrifically damaging to them going into 2024. What do you think? I think that's true. I think they're going to get stuck to him and they kind of know this. They kind of know that they've got to make a calculation about whether to get on board this train, whether it's possible to get off later. But a lot of them, Charlie, they're going into this case, the New York case, the Michael Cohen case, with some very specific objections, like Ron DeSantis saying, you know, hey, you know, in this case, the prosecutor is trying to turn a misdemeanor into a felony for all sorts of complicated reasons.

You can make these arguments against the New York prosecution. And those are fine arguments, in my opinion. I mean, those are legit arguments. Your problem is going to be if you're doing that, if you're Ron DeSantis or whoever, the next case that comes along isn't going to have those complications, right? If it's the Mar-a-Lago case, for example, or if it's some January 6th related thing, you're going to now have to defend Donald Trump on some other grounds. And the pattern is going to become real clear that apart from all of the complications about this or that case, it's this guy who keeps committing crimes or doing things that get him prosecuted. Yeah, it does. I love David Frum's tweet this morning. Trump's plan, keep punching DeSantis in the face. DeSantis plan, raise money and hope that Trump's arm gets

sore from punching DeSantis in the face. One of the problem is that they have become so stuck in not being willing to call Trump out. I just think that's what's going to be so difficult for them to make the pivot, you know, while there's still time. I mean, yes, the polls are going to continue to be horrific in a general election, at least going to the general election electorate. But they have a collective action problem, don't they? If they're not willing to actually take on Trump, you know, with the exception of, you know, a handful of people like Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson and John Bolton.

Well, that may be true among themselves, but let me just defend the DeSantis political strategy for a minute. I love David Frum. That's a good point about him not punching back at Trump. What if DeSantis figures, I don't need to punch Trump because Trump is already getting punched and he's going to get punched over and over again. It doesn't need to be by us. It can be by these prosecutors. So all of these Republicans who know that they want to get rid of Donald Trump, just for purely political reasons, that he's a drag on the ticket, a drag on the party, they don't have the courage themselves, but they know that they can sit there, be cowards, not speak up. And they're counting on the same Democratic prosecutors or just prosecutors in general, who these Republicans vilify as partisans, as phony. They're counting on those prosecutors

to do their political work for them, to hurt Donald Trump, to punch him in the face. That is correct. You know, thinking of Republicans, though, I was on Morning Joe this morning and I quoted the Bible and shocked everybody. You were probably doing show prep for all of this, but I keep thinking as I'm looking at these, you know, Republican polls and watching one Republican establishment figure after another, though, feel the need to rally around Donald Trump. I couldn't help but think of Proverbs 26, 11, as a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool returns to his folly. And I read that on the air, and people were shocked.

Like, Charlie Sykes is talking about dogs. No, think about this, though. The wisdom of the good book. We are going back thousands of years. As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool returns to his folly. I think that just so sums up a lot of what's going on. I know you don't have to comment on dog vomit. You probably weren't counting on that this morning. First of all, you named a verse and I'm like, I'm never going to know what this verse is. And then you did. And then the fact that

you knew it should have told me that it was going to be about dog vomit. Yeah, you probably should have known that. Okay. So a couple of more things about the complaints about this prosecution. And as you point out, there are legitimate questions about, I think, you know, the process this went through. But there's also some ironies, you know, and I mentioned this in Morning Shots this morning, you know, despite all the complaints about, you know, the weaponization of the justice system and how horrible it is that you would actually charge an ex-president. I mean, could we just remember that Donald Trump has been calling for criminal charges against his opponents for years. He has been calling for crooked Hillary to lock her up. A month before the 2020 elections, Trump tweeted out, where are all of the arrests? Biden, Obama, and crooked Hillary led this treason, this plot. Biden shouldn't be allowed to run, got caught. So here's a guy who has been talking about

using the power of the Justice Department against his opponents for years. John Bolton actually made this point. Could we play that soundbite? Because I think, you know, despite all of my reservations about John Bolton, he had some pretty good lines over the weekend. Can we play that soundbite?

To my mind, there is a kind of rough justice here because it's deeply ironic that a person who spent a good part of his four years in the White House trying to weaponize the Justice Department against his political enemies is now saying he's the victim of persecution. It's sort of what comes around goes around. Yeah, what comes around goes around. That's also interesting. We have one more soundbite from John Bolton who made another observation about Trump's legal problems and the reaction. Let's play that, too. It's important to stress that in this case that involves hush money to a porn star to cover up an affair that later involves cooking his company's books, you have not heard a single

Trump defender stand up and say, oh, that's not the Donald Trump I know. That is such a good point, Will. No one is really defending his conduct, right? Nobody's saying, well, he wouldn't do that. They've actually internalized the fact, well, of course he was bopping a porn star while his wife was, you know, I mean, of course he was doing it. And of course he paid her off. We just object to the fact that he's being held accountable for what Michael Cohen went to jail for. But it is interesting, not a single one of those defenders stands up and says, that's not the Donald Trump I know. They bought this ticket. And, you know, Charlie, that could connect to what you were saying before from that CNN poll.

Why are the numbers higher than we might have expected in terms of support for the indictment? Well, because the details of the story here, which is what most people begin to hear and learn about, those are not good, right? That the affair, the hush money, the wife who just had a baby, then, you know, cooking your company's books to cover it up, doing it through your lawyer, the whole thing is crooked, right? Whether you can prosecute this as a crime, whether given the statute of limitations, et cetera, those are all technicalities. And I don't dismiss that. Whether somebody should go to jail or not is an important question. But the story itself is the story of a lech, a crook. He's just a filthy guy. And that just comes across in the story, regardless of the legal details. On this question, though, of should anyone go to jail, Michael Cohen has already gone to jail. You tweeted out a comment by his attorney, Lanny Davis, who was sticking around, I guess, you know, feels like a flashback to the 1990s, who points out that the Southern District of New York prosecutors in writing stated that Donald

Trump, individual one, directed Michael Cohen to pay the illegal hush money, and they sent Cohen to jail for this. Now, the Southern District of New York, this is the Trump Justice Department. So it seems relevant here that as Trump World is objecting to this, it was the Trump Justice Department that sent Michael Cohen to jail and said in writing that Donald Trump, individual one, directed him to pay the illegal hush money. So do they think that it was a terrible injustice what was done to Michael Cohen? And this is the Republican line to the extent that there's a principle being enunciated by Republicans.

It is, we should have equal justice in this country. You're unfairly targeting this guy, Donald Trump, because he's conservative or he's the former president. You just don't like him and you're treating him differently. And the Cohen case cuts against that in two ways. One is, as you point out, it's the Trump Justice Department that supports putting Cohen away. And Cohen actually went to prison for this. But the other thing is Cohen himself, it is the same crime. Cohen did this on Trump's behalf. The documentation says that. The Trump Justice Department affirmed that, right? And so it would be unequal justice to send Michael Cohen to jail for this and then

to give Donald Trump a complete pass, knowing and having stated that he was behind the whole thing. Yeah, and it is kind of complicated what the interaction was between the SDNY and the New York DA here. Cy Vance was on television yesterday, the former DA, who was Alvin Bragg's predecessor, saying that SDNY had told them to stand down on all of this, the implication being that they were going to handle it. What was your take on that, what Cy Vance is saying?

Well, it's complicated because Vance won't go into the details. These prosecutors have their own meetings and we don't want to talk about what goes on in the grand jury, blah, blah, blah. And I respect that, but it makes it very hard to sort out what really went on here. But the signal that Vance was basically sending is do not infer from the fact that we did not prosecute Trump in this case, that we thought there wasn't a case against him. And, you know, Vance points out, we stood back because the feds stepped in and said, hey, we're going to look at this. And then Cohen goes to jail and then the feds don't go after

Trump. So Vance is basically saying, you know, I didn't decide not to go after Trump. I stood back because these guys stepped in. So when you hear Republicans on TV or wherever saying that Bragg is pursuing a case that everybody agreed should not be pursued, take that with a large grain of salt, because a lot of getting a taste of his own medicine in terms of he wanted to prosecute his enemies and now he's getting prosecuted. I would encourage everybody to step back from this. I know that there's a lot of hatred of Donald Trump, including among our audience. And look, he's a bad guy, but it's true that we should not be targeting individuals. We should be prosecuting crimes. And I don't want to hear people getting excited about hurting one person. We should be prosecuting crimes. And I don't want to hear people getting excited about, you know, hurting one person. We should be upholding the law because the rule of law

is what Trump attacked and the rule of law is what we need to be defending. Hey folks, this is Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast. We created the Bulwark to provide a platform for pro-democracy voices on the center right and the center left, for people who are tired of tribalism and who value truth and vigorous yet civil debate about politics and a lot more. And every day, we remind you folks, you are not the crazy ones. So why not head over to thebullwork.com and take a look around? Every day, we produce newsletters and podcasts that will help you make sense of our politics and keep your sanity intact. To get a daily dose of sanity in your inbox, why not try a Bulwark Plus membership

free for the next 30 days? To claim this offer, go to thebulwark.com slash charlie. That's thebulwark.com forward slash charlie. We're going to get through this together. I promise. One of the things that I think is going to be interesting to watch is the fact that the rules for Donald Trump are about to change. I'm not sure he fully knows that yet. I mean, for years, Trump has, you know, insulted and slimed judges. You know, he's attacking this judge for being biased and hating him and everything.

But tomorrow, for the very first time, for the very first time, Donald Trump's going to face a judge presiding over his criminal trial. And it's one thing to, you know, shoot off bleats on social media. It's a different thing when you're the man in the dock. But as I said, Trump may not realize this. I mean, he's planning this primetime televised address from Mar-a-Lago tomorrow night. He now has to have, you know, two different strategies, right? He's got to have what is he willing to say in court to the judge's face versus what he's got to keep feeding to his base. There's going to be some tension here. And a little bit of that was on display. One of his lawyers, is it Joe Tapioca? Is that his name? Charlie, it's Joe Takapina. Okay. So I'm going to call him Joe Tapioca here because I'm figuring that I could take the time to learn how to pronounce his name, but I think he's going to be gone by the time that I would do it. So it's not like it's worth it at this point. So

Joe Takapina was on one of the shows and he's being asked about his client's personal attack on the judge. Listen to this. But President Trump has attacked the judge. Is that your team's official legal position? Do you believe the judge is biased? No, I don't believe the judge is biased. I mean, the president's entitled to his own opinion. Look, he's been the victim of a political persecution. George, you don't have to subscribe to it. I honestly don't care. It's a fact. It is a fact because anyone other than Donald Trump would not have been prosecuted for this ridiculous factual scenario.

But if you don't believe the judge's bias, why is the president saying so? You're interviewing me, George, right? But you're his attorney. I'm not speaking for anyone else except me. Yeah, but I'm his attorney, but I'm myself. I don't, I'm not his PR person. I'm not his spokesperson. He's entitled to his own opinion. And what he's been through, quite frankly, I don't blame him for feeling the way he feels. You're asking me my opinion. Do I think the judge is biased? Of course not. How could I

subscribe to that when I've had no interactions with the judge that would lead me to believe he's biased? So the answer to that, your question is, my response is absolutely not. So you see, Will, it's like the lawyer who has to maintain his status in the bar, who has to perhaps appear before that judge, is really trying to distance himself from Donald Trump. And that's going to be an interesting two-step on the part of the many, many, many lawyers that he's going to cycle through all of this, because he's going to be throwing this shit up against the wall and they have to clean it up. Yeah. And so what Trump is doing is political strategy. How can I go out in public and attack the judge and smear the whole legal process? And, you know, what the lawyer is trying to do is win a case. That's a legal

strategy. It's different. And the judge is making decisions. Don't piss off the judge. But can I flag the particular nature of Trump's attacks on this judge, which Trump has done before? The judge's name is Juan Marchand. I'm probably mispronouncing it, but Trump goes out in truth. He says, this case has never been charged before. This judge hates me. His name is used a lot, right, in public. And Trump is doing this the same way he went after Obama, always saying Barack Hussein Obama, sending a message, the ethnic angle, right? He's other, he hates me. And let's go back and remember, in 2016, Trump is being prosecuted over the Trump University fraud case. And the judge, remember this? I remember this well. The judge's name is Gonzalo Curiel. And Trump goes after this judge and says, again, this judge hates me. Why? Because Trump says, quote, he's a Mexican. The judge is an American.

He's born in the United States, but he's of Mexican ancestry. So Trump goes after that. He's playing the same game here. Trump is absolutely a ruthless ethnic demagogue. If you want to say he's not a racist because he doesn't personally hate Latinos, you can say whatever you want, but he is absolutely playing to anti-Latino racist sentiment by going after this judge in this way. And there was nothing subtle about it. You might recall after that, then Speaker Paul Ryan said that that was a textbook case of racism, that he basically almost in the same breath said, yes, but I still support putting him in the Oval Office. They were not willing to draw the line. Well, here's another example. The fact that he is quite routinely now referring to both the

prosecutor in Georgia and the prosecutor in New York as being racists. This was a racist attack. And of course, what he's saying is because they are black and I am white, they are racist. And he knows what he's doing. And he does this all the time. I mean, Donald Trump, you know, the one of the reptilian instincts he has is he picks his enemies. He picks the people that he wants to portray as as his nemesis. And so he will pick his preferences, you know, any black athlete, any black female, anyone that he can remind people that this person is of this ethnic background. And again, there's nothing subtle about it. And what's interesting is there's almost no reaction. It's like this shrug now. You know, back in 2016, you would have the Speaker of the House of Representatives say this was textbook racism, he's doing the same thing now, not a word from anyone. Exactly. And Charlie, to your point about the word racism, I have been looking over the last week or so at Trump's, you know, his truths and his various

statements and his interviews going back several months about this. That word racist, he has used many, many times, every single time it is to one of the black prosecutors presiding over his cases, or one time it was a New York attorney general, again, a black woman, or it was Charles Blow, a black columnist for the New York Times. It is always a black person to whom he, I don't believe, and I'll challenge our listeners. I cannot recall a time when Donald Trump has of his ownition, used the word racist to refer to a white person. You know, it's very fine people. There's always some other word. He never uses racism to describe white animus against non-whites. I think that's literally true. Before we move on, I want to talk about some of the latest

developments, including this Mar-a-Lago investigation. But we do have a new Republican candidate for president, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, who's been around a very, very long time. I don't know. I mean, I'm guessing that he's not terribly well known right now, but he's been a big figure in Republican Party circles since the 1990s. And he is announcing that he is running and he was asked whether or not Donald Trump should withdraw. He is as forceful as anyone that is in the race so far, with the possible exception of Chris Christie. So here's a former Arkansas governor, Asa Hutchinson, yesterday. You suggested recently that if Trump were to get indicted, that he should drop out of the race. Do you believe that now that he's been indicted? Should he drop out? Well, I do, and for a couple reasons. I mean,

first of all, the office is more important than any individual person. And so for the sake of the office of the presidency, I do think that's too much of a sideshow and distraction, and he needs to be able to concentrate on his due process, and there is a presumption of innocence. But the second reason is, throughout my eight years as governor and as a political leader, I've always said that the people don't have to step aside from public office if they're under investigation. But if it reaches the point of criminal charges that have to be answered, the office is always more important than a person. Your thoughts, Will?

Well, I agree with him, but also as small a chance as Asa Hutchinson has of going anywhere in a Republican presidential primary, and I think you and I are agreed, it's a very, very small chance. He is serving an important function as a model of how to present a position different from the Democratic Party, sometimes opposite the Democratic Party, without going nuts and without defending criminal behavior. So in the case of this New York prosecution, Hutchinson says he has doubts about the case. Some of the same doubts that Ron DeSantis and others have, the way that the charges are presented. But he says, let's let the process play out, right? Because you can be indicted, you can be prosecuted, and you can be found not guilty. And that may be what happens in this case.

But what Hutchinson is saying is you don't have to attack faith in the entire criminal justice system. You don't have to smear the whole system as hostile to Republicans, as biased, as rigged by the left in order to make those points. And I just think it is really important to have even the one percenters, to have the Asa Hutchinsons, the Larry Hogans, whoever, representing a point of view that is not strictly in line with Joe Biden, not strictly in line with Democrats, sometimes opposite them, but is principled and is not falling into line with whatever the hell Donald Trump decides to do.

This will not surprise you that I completely agree with you. And leaving aside the 1%, as I was watching H. The Hutchinson, I was like looking around going, you know, are other Republicans watching this? Because that wasn't so hard, right? This is what a decent political leader will say. This is the conscience of a conservative. He didn't burst into flames. Now they can roll their eyes and say, well, you know, he's only going to get 1%. But the fact that, you know, the decency lane is that narrow and that small, that says a lot more about the Republican Party today than it does about Asa Hutchinson, who is a decent and thoughtful man. So kudos. And he needs to get that message out there. Of course, he'll be attacked for all of this because the contrast between the, you know, the toadies and the toe lickers out there is not terribly flattering.

You know, that here's a guy who is saying what every Republican would have said in any other context about this, you know, the party of law and order that says we're all for law and order. We never thought the law and order would be coming for us. Right. This is early in the process. And the thing to remind people of, you know, besides the fact that we don't actually know what's in that indictment tomorrow, we won't know for another 24 hours or more. We also don't know when all of these other indictments are going to drop. There's a lot of speculation this morning that the Georgia indictments will drop in May. We don't know about Jack Smith, but we got a big headline out of the Washington Post yesterday over

the weekend that Jack Smith appears to be moving rather aggressively at Mar-a-Lago and has more evidence that would tie Donald Trump directly to obstruction of the investigation. So I think that's a much more serious legal threat than what's happening in New York, but also shows that this is not going away. And I think I kind of was thinking that the Mar-a-Lago document case was going to go away after they found documents in Joe Biden's garage. But the obstruction aspect of this after the subpoena was issued is a whole different scenario. So how do you see this? Yeah, I think that that's exactly right. Because remember, the Republican line about the Trump documents at Mar-a-Lago has been that the FBI, the evil deep state is targeting Trump. And part of their evidence is the deep state is not going after Joe Biden, right, who also had documents. And what this

latest information from inside the investigation of the Mar-a-Lago case shows is that the feds are zeroing in on the obstruction part of the case, which is what differentiates Trump from not only Joe Biden, but Mike Pence. Remember, all these guys, and we're going to find more and more people who have documents. Somebody packs up boxes when you're leaving, and it turns out there's something in there that's marked classified. You didn't know about it. Nobody knew about it. It's sitting in a closet somewhere. So this can happen, right? All of the differentiation happens after you're alerted to this, right? Everybody else, Biden, Pence, whatever it says to the government, says to the archives, hey, sorry, I had no idea it was there.

Come in, take whatever you need. Not Donald Trump. So what this latest Washington Post report is about is Donald Trump asking for the boxes. He's been subpoenaed at this point to turn over the remaining. And Charlie, the reason why this is all happening leading into the 2024 election is because Trump's been sitting on this stuff ever since the 2020 election, right? He took it with him. He's dragged it out. It's been subpoenaed. And now they have video evidence. They have emails and texts from his assistant, Molly Michael. They're putting together a pretty good case at

this point that Trump directly intervened because he wanted to keep stuff, even after he was told by the government that it didn't belong to him. It was very interesting watching him with Sean Hannity last week, where Sean Hannity is saying, well, you wouldn't do that. You would never take it. And then he's actually trying to like let him off. It feels like we've been around this so many times. Trump basically goes, yeah, I would. No, absolutely I would. It's my stuff. I get new. And Hendy say, you definitely would not do that.

Would you, Mr. Yes. And then Trump says, yeah, you know, damn right. Damn right. I called the code red. Damn right. It's like, this is kind of the pattern of Trump world saying, you know, no, he would never do that.

And of course, then Trump says, yes, yes, I absolutely would. And eventually Trump world comes around to, yes, he would. And there's nothing wrong with all of them. And how many times have we seen that? So the Mar-a-Lago thing seems very, very real. Also, we're getting reports now that a number of Secret Service agents, people close to Trump in the Secret Service have been subpoenaed by the grand jury and are going to testify by the end of this week in Washington. Now, obviously, that's January 6th oriented. And that goes back to the testimony over the summer from Cassidy Hutchinson about what happened with the Secret Service in January 6th. So all of this stuff is out there. And I guess the question is, you know, how Republicans are going to manage this? I think they continue to think that somehow some legal meteor is going to solve this problem for them without them having to do anything. I think it's far more likely that they're going to be stuck with Donald Trump as the nominee and then just suddenly realize that, you know, they're carrying this albatross around their neck through the 2024 election. Yeah, well, they're in a difficult position, because while publicly claiming that they don't want any of these cases to proceed against Trump, they desperately need from an objectively

political strategy standpoint, they desperately need these cases to move quickly, so that Trump gets hurt badly enough in the primary because the danger of course- While they're bitching and moaning from the sidelines about them. No, no, no, don't do that to him. This is wrong. So you can imagine a world where the Trump legal team in New York, for example, strings out the case against him there with all sorts of technical procedural legal objections. In other words, for stalling any court hearings

about the actual substance of the case. If they can string that out for a long time, then Trump probably doesn't get hurt that much in the primary. And it's not until the general that it comes due. Whereas if the case moves quickly and the judge gets testimony on the record and we're seeing every day more information about the sleazy affair and the judge gets testimony on the record, and we're seeing every

day more information about, you know, the sleazy affair and the hush money and the cooking the books to cover it up. And that stuff could hurt Trump theoretically in a primary. And that's where I think Republicans need to be hoping perversely that the case moves quickly. Going back to John Bolton, he actually did make an interesting distinction. He said, you know, these charges could, you know, provide, you know, rocket fuel for Trump's campaign for the Republican nomination. But everything changes if he's convicted. He thinks that the conviction is the red line, that if Donald Trump is actually found guilty by a jury of these felonies, nothing stops him from continuing to run. In fact, he could still be president as a convicted felonies, nothing stops him from continuing to run. In fact, he could still

be president as a convicted felon, but that would be a breaking point. I think that's true, but I also feel like we've been so naive about what would be the breaking point in the past that I'm not even sure about that. What do you think? I'm not persuaded that it would kill Trump. And the reason I'm not persuaded is that a lot of the objections to the New York case are about the nature of the crime for which he's being prosecuted. Which we still don't actually know. We don't know from the indictment yet. But to the extent that we can go from reporting, I can see a lot of Republican voters saying, they put together the campaign finance thing with the cooking the books thing, and it's all kind of jerry-rigged. And I could see some people saying the thing for which Donald Trump has now been convicted is just not that big a deal. You know, let's go back to Bill Clinton, right? The evidence basically showed that he was guilty of, you know, he had having the affair. It was gross, covering it up, telling people to testify falsely and all that. And still Democrats

basically stuck with him. So I could see the same happening to Trump. Yeah, but he wasn't convicted of a felony in a court of law. And there are consequences to all that. Okay, so this may seem like a digression, but it's not. Is there any question about whether there's going to be a mugshot tomorrow? I have not heard any. I mean, obviously, that's going to be one of the iconic pictures of the year, if not the decade, one way or another. I'm sure that he's sitting down at Mar-a-Lago right now deciding, you know, do I scowl? Do I smile? What do I do? Because you know that mugshot will be on the front page of every newspaper in the world on Wednesday. I was thinking about it over the weekend, though. Maybe I heard just some

speculation, though, you know, he won't be handcuffed and maybe they won't do some of the things. If they do not take his mugshot, I think it will be another example of the asymmetry in these fights. The prosecutors are, in fact, at the same time, they're saying that no one is above the law, actually saying, well, yeah, he's kind of above the law. We're not actually going to go through all of the steps because, Will, if you or I were charged in New York with these crimes, there is no question that there would be a mugshot. If there is not a mugshot of Donald Trump, that basically shows that he's already established that there is a different standard of justice for him. And I'm just raising this flag because that will be a huge tell.

Yeah. Okay. I'll take the other side on this, Charlie. Okay. Please do. That may all be true. Mugshot, handcuffs, whatever. Not handcuffs. I don't want to give Trump any more imagery of him as the victim. He's not the victim. He's the perp. We have got to stop being afraid of him. There's no point to it. It doesn't accomplish anything. Mugshot, handcuffs. Somebody said, it might have been pre-Barrera, that if

Trump wants cuffs, he's going to have to supply them. And I thought to myself, he might. He might. He'd love to be in cuffs. We already know that on social media, there are all these Trump lovers out there with images. You said Holy Week. He's like Jesus. He's being persecuted. So I want to get past the mugshot, get past the cuffs. Let's get into court and let's hear about all of the disgusting things Donald Trump did to cover up his crime. I agree with on the handcuffs thing. I want to see the mugshot because I think this concern, well, you know, if we do this to Donald Trump, he'll get mad and he'll say these things. Fuck that guy. Really, at a certain point, this is the asymmetry. This is why Donald Trump was able to beat Robert Mueller

around the head, because you had prosecutors who were functioning under one set of laws and rules, and you're dealing with somebody that doesn't recognize or respect any of that. Okay, speaking of which, I don't know whether you had a chance to watch the 60 Minutes interview with Marjorie Taylor Greene. There's a lot of debate going on online about all of this, what a whiff this was. I guess part of the real frustration is that we're seeing the, and again, we're using a word that's been overused to death, the normalization of Marjorie Taylor Greene. And Leslie Stahl, who is a fantastic reporter, a great journalist, in some ways seemed outmatched. How do you deal with somebody who is this bizarre, this dishonest, this extreme? To deal with her as like a normal politician in itself basically

means you've lost the game. And at the point where she's referring to Democrats and, you know, the Biden administration is a bunch of pedophiles. And Leslie Stahl's only response is like, oh, wow, wow. As opposed to, no, I'm really going to push back on that. I'm not going to, we're simply not going to air that. I guess, you know, this is the, this ongoing problem that the media has. How do you deal with people who are as bizarrely dishonest, deep in conspiracy theories, thoroughly demagogic as Marjorie Taylor Greene. And I have to say that I tend to agree with a lot of the criticism of 60 Minutes and kind of amazed and disappointed that they would have gone through that. So I have not seen the interview. I have read about

the interview. And so I'm a little bit hesitant to comment, except I know a little bit about how media work in this situation. And, you know, I think 60 Minutes set out, and I think Leslie Stahl set out, to basically expose Marjorie Taylor Greene. I think this looks to me, from what I have read, like an attempt, like 60 Minutes went into this thinking, if we let this woman talk on camera, and she just says what she thinks, she's going to show everyone what a nut she is. And so her attack on her opponents as pedophiles was supposed to be part of that. And it may just be, Charlie, that Marjorie Taylor Greene managed not to expose herself as as nutty as she actually is, that the bet failed. I think that's probably what happened here is that if Leslie Stahl had gotten better material out of Marjorie Taylor Greene, this interview would look worse than it does. Well, I also think that the interview would have been very different if it had been Mehdi Hassan as opposed to Leslie Stahl. And, you know, he was tweeting out about this.

You know, he's been on this month-long book tour about how to do much tougher interviews. And then he comes back here and sees 60 Minutes doing this with Marjorie Taylor Greene. He says, just kill me now. Just actually kill me now. All right. Okay. So switching gears a little bit. This group, no labels. I kind of cheap shot at them.

You know, is this the worst political idea ever? But they're out there floating this idea that there is this exhausted majority out there. They come up with a 24 plan based on the assumption that about six in 10 Americans would consider a generic, moderate third party candidate. 61% of those voters would vote for it, which means that they think that a no labels candidate could win in red states like Texas, Florida, and blue states like Illinois and Washington.

I'm sorry, this seems to me to be deeply and dangerously delusional. What is going on with these no labels folks? So they say they are getting a ballot line for 2024 so that they can run a ticket and that they might not use it. That's the line. Now let's go with the theory that they actually use it, which is what I think you're concerned about. And I think you're right here. No labels is own polling. Their own polling shows that a Trump Biden race, if it's just Trump and Biden is neck and neck, right? And that if you get a third candidate in there, a no labels candidate, Trump is then leading by five points over Biden, right? So their own numbers are telling them not to do this. The basic equation about Donald Trump is that he has a high floor and a low ceiling, which means he's got a big base. So the way for Trump to win is to split the electorate into many, many pieces, in which case Donald Trump. So one guy, one person, could be Joe Biden, whoever, against Donald Trump gives you the best chance of preventing Armageddon, right? Preventing

Trump from becoming president again. No labels. If they start introducing another ticket and it starts taking sort of the sane people from the middle away from Joe Biden, that's going to help Donald Trump get elected. And that's why I and a lot of other people are alarmed at what they're proposing. But that seems so self-evident. Why don't they see that? So I'm going to say two words that will instantly trigger everyone and will explain a lot of this. The two words are Joe Lieberman. So Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic Senator and vice presidential candidate, he triggers a lot of people because he sees himself as a representative of the sane, common sense middle. Right. But there's a certain kind of attitude about it, a certain kind of smugness.

And the smugness is that I represent the sane middle and you don't. So here's Joe Biden basically trying to hold together a coalition of the left and the sane middle. And Joe Lieberman is coming in and pretending that Joe Biden doesn't represent that and that we need someone else to represent that. And so that kind of attitude that we are the sane people and you are not is kind of a disease among many centrists. I am sometimes guilty of it myself. And it can blind you to the political calculation that you need. We all need desperately a coalition of at least 55% of this country, basically everybody from the middle over to the left side to prevent Donald Trump from becoming

president again. Why 55? Because the electoral college, you can't screw around with being close to 50. I mean, in 2016, I thought Trump wouldn't get elected. And the reason was he never got over 45% with a lead. But he got 46% and Hillary got 48. And so you cannot let him get anywhere close to 50. No, this is a very important point. I mean, the structural bias of the Electoral College is such that Democrats do need to get about 55% of the vote in order to be comfortable in winning these elections.

Donald Trump came very, very close in 2020. I think there's been a certain amount of denial about that. I mean, he lost the popular vote by, what, 8 million votes, but he came within a few tens of thousands of votes of possibly winning the Electoral College again. So people should not be cocky about this. What do you make of the fact that Joe Biden is reportedly delaying his announcement, that they may be pushing it into the summer or the late summer? Is there any tea leaves to be read there? Because I think the assumption was that he was going to announce this spring, and now the reports are that he's pushed it back. I don't know why he's pushed it back. I mean, the simplest answer is because he can.

He doesn't have competition other than Marianne Williamson, who's not real competition. And he won't. Right, you're right. So if he can push it back and he can delay becoming a more obvious target than he already is, or just delay having to engage in the politics. Also, to shorten the election season so people aren't so sick of him. I mean, Trump was in the spotlight all the time as president. People kind of got sick of him, a lot of people. Biden probably would like to avoid that.

So that might be a reason. But you know what, Charlie? Can I just say one other thing about the no labels business here? Yeah, because you asked a question and I've been thinking a little bit more since you asked it. Why do they do this? Why would they stick their necks out and try to be a third candidate? Okay. I respect the argument that somebody needs to represent the middle in this country, right? The idea that the middle needs to have some bargaining power. So no labels thinks that by putting together a Larry Hogan ticket or whatever the heck it is they want to do, that that can represent the middle. And then the left and right, the Republicans and Democrats

will have to bid for support from the middle. And somehow no labels will represent that. The actual situation is very different though. What we have right now in this country is insanity on the right half of the political spectrum to such an extent that the right is failing to present a strong enough option, an alternative to the left, right? If you're a left of center person as I am, and you're unhappy with some things on the left, very left views on crime, very left views on border security, I don't have an option on the right. All I've got is this Trump party, which is nuts. The actual way to restore competition for the middle, I think, is to administer beatings to this Trump party. So, so many beatings, so many in

a row that they finally decide that the Trump path is not working for them and they need to go back and appeal to the middle. That's my theory. I agree with you. Okay, so my bad. I actually forgot because things are moving so quickly. I forgot one of the biggest stories of late last week that I think is really in tandem with what's happening with Donald Trump and his legal problems. Fox News had an absolutely horrific day in court last week, and we ought to at least mention this. This judge in Delaware Superior Court concluded that Fox hosts and guests had repeatedly made false claims about the voting machines and their supposed role in the fictitious plot to steal the election.

So what he basically did was he threw out many of the strongest defenses in the Dominion lawsuit, said, we're not going to litigate whether or not these things are true or not. We know just as a matter of law, these claims that were made on Fox were in fact false. He wrote, the evidence developed in the civil proceeding demonstrates that it is crystal clear that none of the statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true in this 81-page ruling emphasizing the word crystal in his ruling.

And he's also not going to allow them to argue that these were just strictly opinions because he says, you know, there's a mixture of, you know, falsifiable facts and mixed in with opinion. So much of their First Amendment defense appears to be eroded. So your thoughts about this? I mean, this was a catastrophic defeat for Fox News' lawyer. And I have to tell you, I cannot imagine that they are not seriously thinking of settling right now. I mean, I think it's always been a big question, but maybe they were waiting for some of these rulings to come down, some of these guidelines, but their strongest defenses have just now

been completely shredded. What do you think? Yeah, I got to say, Charlie, this was one of those moments. So for a lot of us who are watching the insanity of the Trump years and the post-Trump years, shredded. What do you think? Yeah. And I got to say, Charlie, this was one of those moments. So for a lot of us who are watching the insanity of the Trump years and the post-Trump years, we sometimes think the world's going nuts. Like, am I the only one who's still sane? Like you watch Fox News and it's like this alternate universe, right? Taking crazy pills. Then whatever the issue is, it goes into court. And now all of a sudden, instead of having a

bunch of Fox News viewers making political decisions, you have a judge. And whatever you want to say about the legal system, judges tend to focus on the facts. And all of a sudden, there's a restoration of sanity, like all the lies about the 2020 election. And then it went into court and all the judges are like, nope, nope, there's no evidence of significant voter fraud. And this is why Trump attacks the judicial system, right? And why Republicans, they would like to destroy the ability of the judicial system to sort fact from fiction in an objective way. But this ruling in the Fox case, once again, reminds us of what it's like to have actual competent arbiters of fact deciding cases. See, okay, this was the point I was trying to get

at before about how the rules are changing for Donald Trump now that he's the man in the dock in a criminal case. But it's worth underlining that even during all of the election denialism, you would have Trump lawyers who would come out and make these wild statements when they were on Fox News or at press conferences. But when they were actually in front of a judge, totally different tune because in that courtroom, facts still matter. And there are consequences for lying in a way that there's not in the rest of society. So, yes, outside that courtroom, you know, they can let the freak flag fly with any sort of insanity within that judicial system. They're really constrained. Donald Trump is now in the bowels of that criminal justice system and is going to be

for the rest of this campaign. And it's just going to be for the rest of this campaign. And it's just going to get worse. I'm fascinated to watch how the system responds to him, how he navigates, you know, this inside and outside message, because the rules are very different. And Fox News, certainly, I mean, they've been effing around for some time. And last Friday, they found out. Yeah, I think a lot of what's going to happen in this New York case is Trump is going to make war. He's going to try to destroy the distinction between the political world and the judicial world, between the political system and the judicial system.

If the judicial system can hold, you know, if we can show people that in a court of law, we're actually going to address the facts and the law, and we're not going to let politics get in the way, then Donald Trump stands a good chance of losing. But more importantly, this case can restore public faith in the rule of law. It is possible. George Conway was on Morning Joe this morning, and he said, I don't think that Trump is capable of dealing with these criminal investigations in a rational manner. I think his only play that he knows how to engage in is to attack and to foment violence. And the arc of the story, Conway says, is he's going to take himself down, that he's got a playbook that he's used effectively in the past, but it's the wrong playbook for this moment.

So, for example, I think a lot of the attacks on the prosecutors and the juries and the judges has been designed to deter and obstruct. And it's worked so far, right? I mean, it is amazing that in all of these years, Donald Trump has never seen the inside of a criminal courtroom before because he's managed to either obstruct or deter any of these investigations. Well, now he's failed to deter it. The obstruction is coming back to bite him. And so a guy, you know, his age is going

to keep going back to those same playbooks and problematic as Conway is pointing out. Right. And Charlie, I think you're very much right in your analysis of Trump here. Trump does not really understand the idea of courts, of the law, of judicial integrity. And as evidence, I would point to his comments about the three justices that he appointed to the Supreme Court. He has several times complained that his justices, he says, I appointed these people. And then in the case of the 2020 election or other things, they've ruled against me. And he's mystified. He's baffled because he thinks it's just like political patronage. I appointed you, you do what I want.

And so I don't think he's mentally prepared for the idea that judges, certainly not his own judges, and believe me, Trump will go and appeal this and hope that his Trump judges will overturn whatever this judge does. I don't think he's really prepared for judges to rule the way judges do when they're properly observing their role. No, and that's why I think that this is a new chapter and that everything that we've, you know, assumed about him in the past at least should have an asterisk next to it. I mean, look, I know that many of us suffer from PTSD and assume that

neither he nor Fox News will ever suffer any negative consequences. And, you know, that argument has history on its side. There's a lot of, we bear all of the scars. But as you point out, you know, once the wheels of the justice system begin grinding, it is a completely different game. And I would urge people to look up what George Conway had to say on Morning Joe today. Will Salatin, thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate it very, very much. We're going to be on this all week long. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We'll be back tomorrow. We'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.

Hey, folks, this is Charlie Sykes, host of The Bulwark Podcast. We created The Bulwark to provide a platform for pro-democracy voices on the center right and the center left, for people who are tired of tribalism and who value truth and vigorous yet civil debate about politics and a lot more. And every day we remind you folks, you are not the crazy ones. So why not head over to thebullwork.com and take a look around. Every day we produce newsletters and podcasts that will help you make sense of our politics and keep your sanity intact. To get a daily dose of sanity in your inbox, why not try a Bulwark Plus membership free for the next 30 days? To claim this offer, go to thebulwark.com slash charlie. That's thebulwark.com forward slash charlie. I'm going to get through this together. I promise.