The Daily Beast Podcast - Mary Trump’s Horror Prediction if a Republican Wins 2024

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

On this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, Mary Trump joins us to talk all about her uncle’s latest legal woes and her future predictions for both the Republican and Democratic parties. Plus! CNN legal analyst Elie Honig walks us through another round of Trump indictments. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today.

The Mary Trump's show, Mary Trump, joins us to talk about Trump's fourth indictment. Then we'll talk to CNN legal analyst Ellie Honig about the fine details of what Trump's up against in his Georgia indictment. But first, let's have some fun. So, Andy, you know how presidents are oftentimes remembered for their eloquence, their so. speeches the four score and seven years ago. They're, you know, carry a big stick. Their feelings and their convictions. Well, Donald Trump, not that guy.

Not that fucking guy. Unless he's wanting to be remembered for especially the big orange one, which is what. Donald Trump has been lashing out at Fox News, claiming that the network, and this is according to the independent, that the network is working with other Republican candidates to figure out who can beat him in the GOP primary

while guess what? Using unflattering orange photos of him and negative polls. So let me get this straight. He's lashing out at Fox for reality. Because I'm wondering what fucking pictures does he want them to use? The fan art that puts his head on top of, of like a bodybuilder's body?

The poll numbers that are done by Newsmax or Putin that say he's the greatest of all time? What is it he would like people to use you think? I think you pretty much nailed it. I think the answer to both your questions there is yes. That's exactly what he wants. I have to say, though, you've got to give him credit. He's one of the few people who has gone after Fox for telling the truth. That's not usually how it works.

So, you know, once again, Trump is shattering. Norms. That's what he does. But yeah, I absolutely love this. He's mad about the pictures that they show of him. And the quote is so good. He says, especially the big orange one with my chin pulled way back. And it's like, okay, man. I mean, that's you, buddy. Right. It's not like the courtroom, the very flattering courtroom sketches that we have seen that show him looking at least 100 pounds lighter. and with a full head of hair that looks relatively normal. You think about this, you have Maui that was on fire. People have lost their lives. You have skyrocketing rents.

You have, you know, inflation, all of these things that someone serious running for president would care about. This motherfucker, though, is concerned about whether or not he's being profiled with a double chin that he actually fucking has. And not to mention, he's under indictment in three different places for four different cases. And so you'd think maybe he should be a little, just from a purely self-interested point of view, maybe he should be, because I'm not expecting him to care that the death toll in Maui is in the hundreds. Like this is Donald Trump we're talking about.

I do expect him to care that something bad actually might happen to him. him, although he probably still doesn't believe that fully. But regardless, it's like you've got much bigger fish to fry just from a personal point of view than Fox using a picture of you that you don't like. But this is who he is. I mean, it's like, you know, again, you're asking a guy in his 70s to become a different person. And I just don't think it's going to happen.

You know, the funniest thought and picture I have in my mind, though, is walk with me for a moment down fantasy land. If Donald Trump truths himself into, let's say, prison ahead of one of his many, many trials, can you imagine what two days without spray tans, without nips and tucks? Because if this is what Donald Trump looks like with all of the ability to get makeup done, can you imagine what he looks like two days, like just two days behind bars? Yeah, although on, I'm guessing he'll find some way even in prison. Like, he'll find a way. To make his own makeup?

You're right. You're right. Between the makeup and the hair, like, it'll be really something. And I should say, I don't think he's going to prison at all. No, I don't think so. But you said, we're in fantasy. I'm walking with you. I'm right beside you.

Or perhaps I'm respectfully a couple of steps behind you, letting women lead the way, as I like to do as a good ally. Yes, in this fantasy lens. And I would love to see just one picture of Trump without hairspray and makeup. I think it would be absolutely breathtaking, just absolutely breathtaking. Breathtaking indeed. And speaking of breathtaking in the not humorous way at all. And this is why if we actually lived in a place where there wasn't a two and three-tiered justice system,

what is happening and what Donald Trump is egging on with his post. posts about the DAs and the judges that have either indicted him and are overseeing his cases by using threatening language, by posting pictures of himself with a bat and somebody else's picture like he did with DA Alvin Bragg. So what Trump is doing with all of these insinuations, all of these actions is to rile up his violent ass MAGA base. And by rule of law in Georgia, the names of the jurors from the special grand jury are part of the indictment, which in any normal situation would be okay. Like this is a part of their state law.

But we're not in a normal situation. Not when we saw a court-appointed clerk flanked by multiple police officers as she was handing the indictment to the judge, that we see barricades around buildings. None of this should sit normally in our mind. And why is that? Because as being reported by NBC News, the purported names and addresses of the members of the grand jury that indicted Donald Trump and 18 of his crime ring have been posted on a fringe website that often features violent rhetoric.

And the Fulton County District Attorney's Office has declined to comment at this time. We already know that DA Fannie Willis has received a. a just blizzard of racist threats and misogyny and threats of rape and the N-word use, she said more times than she could possibly ever count. And so this is why Donald Trump should be held in prison, should be held with a gag order leading up to all of these trials because nothing is going to shift until, God forbid, whether it be a DA, a judge, or a juror could potentially lose their life or be harmed. Yeah, we've said this before. This is what they want. This is what Trump wants. And he's, in this instance, you know, he is smart enough not to himself make direct threats. But he knows exactly what everything he says is going to lead to. And it's exactly what he wants. And we can't have any of the, well, you know, Trump didn't do this. He's horrified by this. No, he's not. And this is beyond, you.

you know, the names and addresses have been posted of the people that are, again, purportedly the grand jurors, and which is bad in and of itself. And who the hell knows if they even got it right? Because as we know, sometimes these are not the brightest internet sleuths in the world. And sometimes they'll just find someone with the same name and claim, you know, we see this all the time. So they may be, you know, I don't want to say it's even worse if they're not grand juror members because it's, it's equally bad. either way, but it's, I don't know, in a sense, I guess it's even more fucked up if some of these people aren't actually the grand jurors. But you've got posts on, as Ryan Riley and Blaine Alexander reported at NBC, posts on pro-Trump forums saying things like, these jurors have signed their death warrant by falsely indicted President Trump. It is unbelievable that simply by serving

on a grand jury, which, you know, is something that you are compelled to do, if, you're putting your life in danger. And I guess we're sort of used to this in mob trials and stuff like that, but we're not used to it in the indictment of a politician. It's just another example how this is, you know, I think it was, was it Mary Trump that said that it's always been a mob family? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, that's exactly the right sentiment. Like, everything going back to the days in construction and everything like that is just his entire fortune has been built on a mob mentality.

mob meaning a mafia type thing in this case. And this is exactly the kind of thing that we are, I think, more used to hearing about in something like a mob trial where witnesses, you know, are afraid to testify or mysteriously disappear, or where, you know, jurors are afraid for their lives if they vote to convict. And now we're seeing it with a former president of the United States. And it's just no matter how cynical you are, like even this is just like, What the fuck, man. Yeah, and I want to read this quote by a former FBI investigator and staffer for the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee who founded the nonpartisan research group Advanced Democracy, Daniel J. Jones. And he says it in this article, quote, it's becoming all too commonplace to see everyday citizens performing necessary functions for our democracy being targeted with violent threats by Trump's supporting extremists. The lack of political leadership on the right to denounce these threats which serve to inspire real world political violence is shameful. And that's the other thing too, is that you cannot control the actions of people. But what you can do is use your platform to denounce it,

to say that this is not what we stand for, that we are actually going to see how the rule of law plays out. and we believe that Donald Trump can be vindicated. Like, you can say that. You can stand up and you can defend this fucking crook for, you know, with all the breath and life inside of your body. But what you should not do is stand silently by while he riles up his violent mob to attack innocent people.

What you shouldn't do is then say that because our justice system dares to actually hold somebody like Donald Trump to account that somehow the system, in fact, is flawed. That is crazy. But if you want to defend him, go off. Go all the way off. They could do this entirely differently, but they are choosing violence instead. No, absolutely. And that gets back to, you know, sort of what I was saying. This is what they want. This is not unfortunate to them. This is the kind of country that they envision. This is their vision of America. And it's just, it's funny because they're always the ones that are talking about crime and how bad crime is. It's like, yeah, motherfuckers, you're the ones doing it. It's just amazing to me that, like, this party that has always used law and order as its little

code phrase for, you know, we all know what that really meant. But they always pretended to be for law and order. And it's very clear that that was never the case and that it really was just code for, you know, black people. And look, we've got this woman in. Oh, yeah. I was just, Just pulling it up. Go ahead. Yeah. This woman in Texas who has now been charged with threatening to kill Judge Chutkin, who was overseeing one of the trials in D.C., one of the Trump trials. She left a message on her voicemail saying, you are in our sights. We want to kill you.

If Trump doesn't get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you. So tread lightly, bitch. You will be targeted personally, publicly, your family, all of it. Who leaves that on a voicemail? This woman is not right. Mm-mm. I mean, when the FBI confronted her, she, A, admitted she told them, you know, right off the bat that, yes, she made the call, but that she had no intention of actually, you know, going to

Washington to carry out her threats. She then said to them, if Sheila Jackson Lee comes to Alvin, Texas, then we need to worry. So she just went ahead and made another threat directly to the feds right in front of them. And then it came out, I guess her dad, this woman's dad at her bottom. Her dad said he thinks she does this all the time. She sits on the couch and she drinks a bunch of beer and she watches Fox News and then she calls in threats. And like that's what she does.

That sounds like your average Fox watcher. But it's so bleak. That is, it's so bleak to think that she is not the only one out there doing this. And it's just, oh man, how did we get here? The denial, the silence or the, you know, the, the, the egging. on that is happening within the Republican white supremacist party is going to lead to violence. You see this woman today. It was Utah last week with the man being killed by the FBI for threatening to kill Joe Biden

and Alvin Bragg and others. Like this is becoming way too commonplace in what is supposed to be a democratic society. What is supposed to be a society of law and order and rules. Now, you know, the reality is when you think about America in historical context, we've had presidents assassinated. We have had attempted assassinations of presidents that we've seen in the modern error. And violence is not new, but what is happening is that the threat over the last decade has increased because we've never seen it egged on in the way that it is by a political party. Yeah. That's the thing.

That's the difference here when you're just like, wait a minute, what makes this different from 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago? It's that you actually have members of Congress like a Marjorie Taylor Green, like a Matt Gates, like Mo Brooks, who wore the Teflon vest at the Stop the Steel rally. Like you have these people who are raising their fists in the air and saying, we're with you, extremists. Yeah, look, these are the people who wear AR-15 pins on their lapels. Oh, you're right. You're right. What are we to expect? We know what's going on here. What's happened is they've built the whole party out of their fringe. And it's no longer the fringe. It's the whole party now. And so they're sort of trapped because, you know, they know that if they say something negative about this woman or about the people posting the names of the jurors, that's going to upset a large part of the party. Not that these people are making these threats, but that they're calling them out for them. And that's going to piss off their constituency. because they have built the entire party out of what used to be the fringe of the party. And the normies are pretty much gone for the most part. And this is who they're left with.

They're too afraid to say anything because these are their voters. As we're talking about the ways in which this party is just collapsing in on itself and has become entirety, the fringe. You know, this recent reporting of Ron DeSantis's campaign from the New York Times, is just part and parcel for the course of where this party is headed. So Ron DeSantis, which has reset his fucking campaign more times than I don't even know what to compare it to. I have no comparison to make in terms of how many fucking false starts this guy has had. But now being leaked out by Axios and picked up by the Times is that Ron DeSantis,

a quote, needs to take a sledgehammer to Vivek Ramoswamy, the political newcomer, according to the New York Times, who is rising in the polls, he should, quote, defend Donald Trump just forever when Chris Khrase inevitably tax him. This is all that is being said that Ronda Santis needs to do in the debate. And that he needs to do this, I mean, and they list out the amount of times that he needs to do each of these things. And because Ronda Santis is an Android, you know none of this will seem fucking natural. It'll be like, you'll see him mouthing. One, two, three, four, five. I hate Joe Biden. And then like moving on to, and Vivek, fake Vivek, no Vivek. I hate Vivek. Like, it will be so automated and like he will make artificial intelligence look real. That's how, you know, prescribed this

package trying to get in order to showcase that he has some type of power. And I'm like, again, you're defending Donald Trump into abstention. And I'm like, he's the frontrunner. But you're going for like the guy in third place. One, as a strategist, I don't get the strategy here. And two, it's not going to work because he's a terrible fucking candidate on top of just being a terrible person. Yeah. I'm not sure I remember another presidential campaign season where the number two guy in the polls, basically refused to attack the number one guy in the polls, and to take it even further, is actually defending him. It is absolutely surreal. And again, I think this also gets back to what I said, though. They know what the party is now. They know who is going to vote in the primaries.

And it's going to be mostly people who think Donald Trump is innocent and is being unfairly persecuted and that Joe Biden and the Biden crime family are after him, and that's why you have all these indictments. So they really are stuck, and it couldn't happen to a nicer party. You know, I don't feel bad for them, but they are kind of stuck. And DeSantis, in particular, as like the second place guy, is really in the worst possible position,

because if he's not going to attack the number one guy, how is he going to become the number one guy? It's just not going to happen. But if he attacks the number one guy, he's going to piss off the majority of the party. So he's just kind of screwed, I think. And I think he's just now finding himself in a spot where there's no path for him. Like, there is no path for him to be the nominee. And in reality, there's no path for any Republican candidate except Trump to be the nominee.

Because this is how they've chose to wage their primary battle. And they're not going to touch him. And he's probably not going to show up at the debate. so they're not going to get to, you know, do anything to him there, not that they would have anyway. So I honestly don't know what they're supposed to do. I know this seems insane to sit there and, like you said, attack the people below you and blow smoke up the ass of the person above you who couldn't even be bothered to show up, by the way, because I highly doubt that he's going to.

Nor to call you by your rightful name, right? Like you're defending a man that debases you on a regular bait. Like, it's just so fucking spineless. Like, you can't be the alpha in the room and not stand up to the top dog and say, yeah, he's still my buddy, even though he calls me Meatball Rob and like all of this shit. You look like a punk, bro. You look like a punk. Which is what DeSantis is.

I mean, he ultimately, he is a punk and he's, you know, it's a kind of bully where he likes to pick on the people below him. And that's why you see him pick on various minorities in Florida. Florida. And that's why he's going to pick on Ramoswami, who's running below him in the polls, because that's who he is. He's just, he's a cut rate bully and a second rate fascist. And that's how those people act. They never go after the people stronger than them, you know, because they get their satisfaction out of picking on the people in weaker positions than they are. That only works, though, when there's nobody stronger than you. And right now, there's somebody who basically is

crushing you under his heel every day. So he's just screwed, I think. Folks, I am so excited to welcome back to the new abnormal. Mary Trump, host of the Mary Trump show, psychologist, and yes, the niece of Donald J. Trump, a man facing 91 charges, twice impeached, a sexual assaulter, a man held accountable for defamation. Mary, How's your summer going? Summer? What's that? Well, better than some people's, I suppose.

This ride won't stop, will it? No, I just feel like we are on a coaster going through a black hole down through hell with no breaks. And so, you know, on one hand, you have some people that are like, this is accountability. This is our systems holding. for Donald Trump to have now been indicted four times. At the same time, I'm just like, is this what accountability looks like? Is this what it looks like to have the systems hold? When we have a judge that is receiving death threats, a district attorney in Georgia that's

receiving death threats, Jack Smith, special counsel receiving death threats, we watched a county clerk be flanked by multiple police officers as she handed over the Georgia in indictment. Like, is this what the system working and holding looks like to you? No, not at all. And in fact, I think it underscores just how fragile the system is. We already have other kinds of evidence for that. At the top of the list, one thing I would put is the fact that we have still serving in Congress and sensibly running our government active seditionists. And not just a handful, dozens, over 140, if you add the Senate and the House of Representatives. Where is the accountability for their role in the attempted insurrection?

Is it justice? Is this the system working when Ruby Freeman and Seymos were able to be treated the way they were treated? Is it the system working when our ability to hold free and fair elections has been diminished because of poll workers like them have been threatened and are quitting because it's too dangerous to do the job of counting the votes subcast by the American people. So no, it doesn't feel like the system is holding unless it's the system of two-tiered justice and, you know, are continuing inability. to root out bad actors, to root out the racism and the misogyny inherent in that system. Listen, I'm not going to suggest that it's meaningless.

Of course, it matters. Because imagine if he weren't getting indicted. You know, that would be extraordinarily dangerous. It's not nothing, of course, but even in watching it play out, he's still being held to a different standard. He's still being treated differently. That should be considered a flare, an emergency flare, that the system is on the brink, not of holding, but of disintegrating.

You know, it is, I feel like we are in a place of disintegration. I think that that is like the perfect word where you can have someone. And again, I feel like mainstream media has glossed over this, has glossed over how we are in a high threat red alert scenario in terms of domestic terrorism and violence because of Donald J. Trump, because of the fact that this man has incited violence before and that his followers are just waiting for his stand back and stand by in order to go after his perceived enemies. And the fact that we are just kind of rolling with this, and he is continuing to threaten the judges overseeing his case, he's continuing to threaten the special counsel and the district

attorneys that are over his case, anyone else would be thrown in jail until their trial, because they would be seen as a fucking danger, not just to the country, the jury pool, all of these things. And so when you look, at this and you say two-tier justice system, but of course. And I know that you were on Alex Wagner recently because I was watching it and usually I try and be in bed, but I can't be in bed these days because I can't sleep. And so I know that she had asked like, well, do you think that he is feeling a type of way? Do you think that he feels like the walls are closing? And so I'm going to ask the same, you know, the similar question. Like you're not his psychologist, right? But you were in the

family. And so given what you know, explain to us, is it more catch up all over the walls? Is it a full-blown, you know, meltdown? What does it look like? First, I just want to get back to something you said a little earlier. Anybody else would be in jail right now. Yes. That seems to be the new iteration of imagine if Hillary Clinton had done this. Imagine if Obama had done this. Imagine if any generic Democrat had done this. It's just appalling. that we're confronted with these massive discrepancies and how people are treated, especially given the fact that out of all of the people not getting put in jail for the kinds of behavior Donald's engaging in,

he's the one who can actually create dangerous situations for people who are just doing their fucking jobs, right? He's the stochastic terrorist. Mm-hmm. So it's time for, somebody for one of these extraordinarily powerful judges to take it seriously and do something about it. You know, I don't care how the fascists on the right will react if Donald is treated exactly the same way as any other criminal defendant in his position. I don't care.

Nobody ever asked that question. It's like, well, how will people react if he keeps getting away with it? Well, you know what? We're going to lose our democracy. That's what's going to happen. So anyway, I just wanted to emphasize how deeply frustrating it is for those of us who actually are paying attention. Because I think that when you say, when you had Merrick Garland, my least favorite human, when he had Merrick Garland come out and say, no one is above the law, it doesn't matter the office, it doesn't matter this, Merrick Garland at that time hadn't begun to open up a folder

to start an investigation on Donald Trump. And we would be in an entirely different place if Merrick Garland had started his investigations a year earlier, right? Like there would have been no talk about this being a political witch hunt and close to whatever. I mean, they still would have done it, but it would have been like, dude, we're not picking candidates for another year plus. So what are you talking about? So by virtue of Merrick Garland's mismanagement of the political calendar and his assumption that Trump was just going to go away, Donald Trump, was just going to go away and not run again and just, you know, go back to reality TV was a deep miscalculation on his person and his character and his ego, frankly. And so when we see these

things playing out, when you look now at this criminal court map, Mary, what do you feel like is the likelihood that we see Donald Trump in a courtroom on trial in the next year? I think one of these trials will start. I do believe that. Now, the question is how far it will go. I don't know if courts are subject to the same kinds of delays that the Justice Department imposes on itself. In other words, the Justice Department won't. Actually, I don't know if it's bring charges. What is it called when the DOJ won't reveal certain information within a certain time frame before an election, unless you're Hillary Clinton, of course. And then... Yes. The month before doesn't matter. They're not going to bring charges. They're not going to announce anything. I don't think courts

are a subject to that same thing. And ironically, I think the more cases there are in different venues, the more likely it is that one of them will get there because if Donald's strategy is to keep delaying, he's got so many plates spitting in the air. And I think he's got two attorneys because he can't hire anybody. Plus, again, as Judge Chuckin made it clear, she'll just speed up the timeline based on his behavior. So I do think it's likely. I don't know that we'll get resolution, honestly. And even if we did, I don't think it affects anything in terms of the election,

because even if he's found guilty of many charges, he's not going to prison because he'll appeal and will almost certainly be released. on his own recognizance, right? Because he's a rich white guy. So it's very troubling. It's very troubling. We have a recent poll, and everybody who listens to me knows that, like, while I'll talk about the numbers, I don't hold a lot of stock in them.

But this one by AP, I thought, was actually really interesting, which was saying that 64% of people polled. I don't know who those people are, because I've never been pulled. Have you ever been polled, Mary? I've never been pulled. Never, only on Twitter. Right. So 64% of people polled said they would not vote for Donald Trump.

And so just electorally, let's move away from the criminal cases because I think that, unfortunately, given our two-tiered system, like you have said, I think that we're in a tossa, which is absolutely fucking bananas. Banana Republic, absolutely fucking bananas. Moving away from that into the electoral space and the presidential election and the latest poll saying, 64% of the country is like, he's bad for the country. I'm not voting for him. And we know that his 30% rabid base isn't enough to get him elected. And we also know that he can't use the same tricks and tactics from 2020 to try and steal the election because now everybody is hip to it.

What happens to the party and Donald Trump in 2024 as we march towards election day? They continue the project they've been engaged in for the last several decades. They tinker around the edges, knowing that it doesn't matter, is 65% of the country won't vote for Donald? They only need an extra 10,000 votes or so in Georgia and Pennsylvania and Arizona or Wisconsin. So they cheat in ways that Donald can't anymore. They gerrymander more. They make it harder for people of color and college students. to vote. Joe Biden didn't win by almost eight million votes. He won by about, I don't even remember,

44,000. So that's, that's where the crisis lies in that very slim margin. And the Republicans know that. I mean, do you think we make it, Mary, like as a country? Like, do you think that there is a excavation, a cleaning of the wound and a healing that happened? if in fact Donald Trump is held criminally accountable for his five-decade crime spree, but I know we're only concentrating on the last, you know, seven and eight years. But if he's held criminally liable, if the Republican Party can't possibly win with him, and the rest of their band of idiots are like are also not palpable to the MAGA base, because they're not. They may have, DeSantis has the same evil spirit and worst.

cruel policies, but he doesn't have the charisma. He doesn't have the likeability, and that is still unfortunately important. And so if they don't manage, like, is there possibility? Do you see possibility, I guess, is the question. Well, first of all, just the fact that Donald could be compared favorably to anybody in the categories of charisma and likability is both tragedy and farce. It's just incredible to me. But yes, he has charisma and there are tens of millions of people in this country like him.

So there you go. And yeah, unfortunately, that matters more than competence or integrity or any of the other things that are required to make a decent president. Or person for that matter. Or person for that matter. I said before the 2020 election that what needed to happen was not just for Donald to lose, but for the entire Republican Party to be repudiated. And it was not. In fact, the Republicans fared better than Donald did. That's one of the reasons we're in this situation right now. So I'll say it again. In order for us to have a shot at it, the Republican Party needs to be reputed, like burn to the ground, metaphorically speaking, in 2024. And the rest of us need to wake the fuck up to the dangers that will continue to face us, even if,

Donald loses. Donald goes to prison forever, which, of course, he should because he's a symptom. He is no longer the problem. He is in some ways irrelevant. We've got to understand that if any Republican running won the presidency in 2024, we would have exactly the same problem, except we would have a newly empowered Republican Party who has been given a roadmap by Donald Trump, showing them how to get away with murder and become more powerful, more cruel, more authoritarian, and more fascistic.

So, I mean, basically said, and he so eloquently just did, the Republican Party needs to be taken down past the studs. Yeah. The Republican Party needs to be aired completely and totally out for the authoritarian, fascistic, cruel, violent, lawless criminal enterprise that that party has become under the leadership of Donald Trump, that is what it has become. And I don't think that there is a way back. And sometimes, you know, you burn crops in order to create fertile ground, right? Right. So that's where we are. Because the truth of the matter is,

you know, the truism is that democracy council. survive unless we have two functioning political parties. Well, okay, we don't, though. We don't have two functioning political parties. And the Republican Party needs to go away and rebuild and come back with serious policy proposals. And in the meantime, the Democrats just need to run everything and fix everything. Because let's face it, we don't have seven decades to recover. We don't have seven decades to withstand and recreate ourselves if a Republican wins in 2024. First of all, if a Republican does quote unquote win in 2024, we will never have another Democratic administration. And secondly, climate change will accelerate, as we've already seen it happening,

because a Republican administration will just let everything burn to the ground. And I mean that literally. We will have to leave it today there, my friend, Mary Trump. You know, one day we'll come back and we'll talk about hopeful things. Yeah. And maybe that'll be in 2025. So here's hoping. This is really somber. I'm so sorry to be the somber, but I'm feeling kind of somber. I'm not feeling hopeless, but I'm feeling somber. Yes. And I feel you always appreciate your insights, my friend. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Danielle. Thank you for having me. Another month, another round of Trump indictments. And here, yet again, to walk us through everything is CNN's senior legal analyst,

Ellie Honig, author of the great book, Untouchable. How powerful people get away with it. Ellie, welcome back yet again. Thanks for having me. This is number four, indictment number four. I can probably appearance number. But you know, you really do have to sort of start with that because whenever I do these CNN segments where we're like, give us an overview, you know, they'll ask me, hey,

tomorrow, can you do an overview of all the cases? Or even if we're talking about one case, I was going, okay, this. This is the Jack Smith case, the federal case in Marilago, the documents. Or this is Fonie Willis, the one we're talking about mostly today. This is in Fulton County, Georgia. This relates to the election of 2020. Like, you have to be clear. And by the way, that's any sane person couldn't possibly keep these all straight in their minds.

No, absolutely. Yeah, it's absolutely nuts. We were talking a little bit before we started. And, you know, I feel like going through the indictments count by count is that sort of day of stuff. And it's been done to death. So I want to get into different type questions. The only thing I'll really ask you up front is I'm curious if anything about these indictments surprised you. Yeah, meaning the Fannie Willis new indictment.

Yeah. It is a very, very big swing by Fonnie Willis. I mean, one of the conundrums with this indictment and weirdly with Jack Smith's, not the Mar-a-Lago indictment, but the January 6th indictment, in both of the election theft indictments, Fonnie Willis and Jack Smith, the facts themselves are largely uncontested. Who said what? Who did what? Who met with who? Who sent what text to each other? There's really not much of a no, that never happened. It's all kind of obvious that it happened. The trickier question for us and for eventually a jury will be, is it a crime, A, and B, isn't the crimes charged in these indictments? Because sometimes it's an easy fit between what happened in a criminal law. I mean,

drug cases, okay, I had drugs, gun cases, robberies. Even your more typical frauds, hey, lied to this bank got a huge loan as a result, lied to this investor made off of the money. This one, we've never seen before. It's never happened before. And I think the challenge of looking at Fannie Willis's case is a lot of the charges are sort of hard to, I guess, explain and understand. I mean, I'm just, I have the indictment in front of me now because it's actually been surgically attached to my body.

And it says, okay, impersonating a public officer, what does that mean? I'm just, you know, I'm just putting, I mean, it's not like someone dressed up like a cop and started pulling cars over, right? Right. Solicitation of violation of oath by public officer, meaning you ask the public officer to do something disloyal. I mean, these are real crimes under Georgia law, but it's not the kind of thing a regular person goes, aha, I know what that is. So I think that's the difficulty here. The other way that it's a big swing is she just charged everybody. And, you know, Donald Trump is the most culpable actor here, clearly. And she makes that case in her indictment. But I mean, what did Jenna Ellis? do. I'm not some sort of Jenna Ellis fan. I think she's a disgrace to our profession as a lawyer. But, you know, what did you? I'm just like, I'm just asking the listeners out there, listeners. What did Jenna Ellis do? She was incredibly obnoxious. She came up with some ridiculous legal theories. Did her actions constitute criminal conduct that should get her locked up? I don't know about that.

And so it seems like what happened here is, you know, the RICO charge, the racketeering charge that leads this indictment is very broad. I used to charge it all the time in my mob cases, the federal version, which is a little different than the Georgia State version, but very similar. And it seems like Fannie Willis has just sort of said, anyone who went near any of this or touched any of this is getting thrown into the RICO because they were all part of it. But part of it is important when we're looking at this historically and who should bear blame. But I'm not sure it's going to be enough for some of these fringier players criminally. There's a couple things here. I guess one, this does feel a lot different than the DOJ. election case. As you say, it's more complex. It has the racketeering and conspiracy elements. It's a lot

broader. I was wondering, does this make it tougher for prosecutors? Or is there a sense where it's easier because it's giving the jury the big picture? And the prosecutors can really tell a story here. And you saw this even in the indictments, like the Fawney Willis indictments told a story. Yeah. In a way that the Jacksmith ones didn't because they were just so different. Oh, that's interesting. I actually see them differently. Really? I felt like Jack Smith reads like a sort of smoother narrative. Like, then this happened. Fonnie Willis is a little bit disconnected to me, not in a way that's legally detrimental,

but I mean, Fonnie Willis sort of has these 161 acts, racketeering acts that are just sort of one after the other with no real like bigger picture. Like, I mean, here, I'm just, I just open it. Act 30. Honor between the third day of December 2020, 20, 26, 2020, Donald John Trump placed a telephone call to the president pro tempore of the Georgia Senate, Butch Miller. This was an overact and further into the conspiracy. Next one. It's like another phone call, but it doesn't say like what's happening in those phone calls. To me, it's actually a little harder to understand what happened just by reading

Fannie Will's. That could just be, you know, different audience, different reader, you and me. But the racketeering charge, the beauty of racketeering is exactly what you said, Andy. It allows you to give the jury the whole story. Now, to an extent, a conspiracy charge can allow you to do that. But with the racketeering charge, you can stand in front of the jury and go, this was a group of people working together as an enterprise, to use the legal term, and they committed a series of crimes towards some sort of common goal. Now, ideally for a prosecutor, it would be the kind of cases I did were easy. I mean, in this respect, you could go, they're the Genevice crime family. Like, they have a name. They have ranks. They have initiation. You know, they have ceremonies and

stuff. But what, you know, it doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to have. a varsity jacket and a tattoo that says Trump Enterprise in order to be a member of the Trump Enterprise. It's a little harder to explain to a jury, but the beauty is you get to put that chart up in front of the jury that we've seen in all the cop shows where the hierarchy looks like a pyramid, and you put Donald Trump right at the top, and that is where he belongs, and it lets you tell a more compelling story. But the downside is you do have to draw lines as a prosecutor, and I think that goes to some of my concern about Fannie Willis's indictment. And by the way, the whole fact of Fannie Willis indictment. I've actually made the argument that

I'm not so sure Fannie Willis's indictment is a good idea as a whole. And we can talk about that. But when I was at the Southern District of New York, we kind of had like two approaches to trials. There was what we called the kitchen sink model. I don't think the proponents of this called at that. And you're probably able to tell which side I was on, which is just like overwhelm the jury, throw everything at them, every piece of evidence. If you have 400 photos of your defendants standing outside of social club chatting with each other, show them all. And I did my first mob trial under that theory, and it did not go well. In fact, I think I talk about this in one of my books. Like, there was a moment when I could just sense like, oh, the jury's gone. Like, they're just bored. And that jury hung, meaning they couldn't get to a unanimous verdict, but it was two to ten against us. Usually when juries hang, it's like 11 want to convict and one wacko doesn't want to. But in this one, two people wanted to convict and 10 wanted to acquit. We got to retry if there's a hung jury. So we retried it and we cut our case down from four months to two weeks. and we convicted them on everything. It was like, okay.

So I'm a big believer in like, get your strongest stuff out there, keep it simple, keep it strong, get it in, get it out, and get done with it. And Fannie Willis is not taking that approach. She's taking the opposite of that approach. Again, I'm not saying she's wrong. These are different approaches. It's not my personal approach. Gotcha.

You know, and I've seen some of the conservative takes on this case, whether they're ingenuous or not. But I see a lot of a, oh, it's now illegal to tweet. Oh, now you can't talk on. the phone or book hotel rooms. And this does sound incredibly disingenuous because, of course, the idea is, well, you can't do those things in furtherance of a conspiracy. This happens in every case. And it's a really, you put your finger on it because it's a really important technique to identify and call out, which is the let's slice up the indictment or the charges here into the narrowest possible pieces, hold them up one at a time and go,

what's wrong with this? I mean, look, I could go, what's wrong with going to Home Depot and buying zip ties. Maybe I have electrical court, right? But if it's part of a robbery attempt where you're going to tie people up, then, you know, then you see how it fits in. There's nothing wrong with going to Home Depot and buying zip ties, but it depends how it fits into the bigger picture. And so I think that's exactly the argumentative technique that you're seeing here. And by the way, it's a very common and can be effective method of argument that defense lawyers do. They'll go up to go, so he sent a tweet? God help us, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if it's a crime to send a tweet, He, you know, he set up a phone call.

Oh, my, what a crime. But then you have to stand up as a prosecutor on your rebuttal and say, all of these acts were part of the larger conspiracy. This is how they tried to steal the election. This is how they committed this fraud. And that's a very common back and forth at trial. Yeah, it just seems like if I pick up the phone and call someone and say, kill this guy and he kills this guy.

Right. We can't make phone calls now? Right. Exactly. So it's such a weird little argument. but like you said, it's very common. Yeah. I was a little surprised to hear Fawney Willis say at the end of her press conference that she intended to try all 19 defendants together.

But should I not have been? Is this SOP or what? I wasn't surprised to hear her say it, but I will be stunned. I will pass out from shock if it actually happens. Oh, okay. And I think she knows that. I mean, look, I don't falter for saying it because the way you're trained as a prosecutor and I would have done this. Anytime you're asked, how are you going to do this trial?

You go, I'm trying everyone and we're doing it. tomorrow as far as I'm concerned, right? I mean, God help you. You cannot go in there as a prosecutor and go, oh, Judge, we're not really ready yet and we kind of don't want to have them all together. You know what I mean? So she was doing what prosecutors should do. There is a 0.0% chance that she tries 19 people at once for the following reasons. One, I doubt 19 are going to go to trial. I mean, people are going to plead, even if they're not cooperating, people are going to take pleas eventually. Two, it's physically impossible. It's not just 19 people. Every one of these people has multiple lawyers, apparently.

Of course. Who knows? I did a five defendant trial. I did a couple four defendant trials. Like, even that is wild. Like, it's so overcrowded. There's no room. There's people spilling into the seating area.

19. I mean, I was going to say Fulton County Stadium. That's where the Braves used to play in the Dave Murphy, Bob Horner days. But whatever that is now, wherever the new team plays, you would have to hold it there. And a couple other things. Think of how long this trial. By the way, the Fonnie Willis trial is going to take. an eternity. There is a case right now that her office is doing where they are going into month

seven of jury selection. Yes, you heard me right. They have spent seven months selecting a jury. It's not her fall. It's just state courts can be maddeningly slow. Now, on top of that, if you tried 19 people at once, you know how many openings there's going to be? 20. The government's plus 19 defense openings. You know how many cross-exams there could be on each year witnesses? 19 there wouldn't actually be. They would divvy it up a little bit. And then the final The final thing is it's probably unconstitutional. Now, there are stories of days in the 80s when 16 people were tried at once. But since then, the Supreme Court has said, we are really wary of what we call the mega trial. Because they had never given an exact number. But basically, they've said, like, when you get into the 10 range, it really becomes impossible for the jury to do what they're supposed to do, which is individualized justice, rendering separate verdicts for every defendant and every count. How are you going to do that with 19 defendants? How are they going to be able to say Robert David Shealy on count 15? Like, I mean, how are they possibly going to be able to do that? So she's not going to.

But if it did end up with the 19 defendant trial, I don't even think it would survive appeal. That's really interesting. And, okay, that makes me feel a little better about my jaw dropping a bit at the thought of this. I was on air. I mean, you know, we were watching the remarks before they cut back to us. But I think when she said that, I must have laughed out loud into the control room. Yeah. So what do you make of, you know, Mark Meadows, his lawyers have filed a motion to move this case out of the

Georgia courts and into federal court, where he will, I guess, then claim that the Constitution won't even allow him to be prosecuted for this. And there are rumblings that Trump himself may file for a change of venue to federal court. Should he do this? Is there a decent chance of succeeding on these change of venues? So they both absolutely will. And they both should because why not? It's, you know, if you're a defense lawyer, you should take that shot. The question is, if these folks were federal officials, which they both were, acting within their capacity as federal officials, then they can't be charged for state crimes. And if that happens, they get moved over to federal court, first of all, which has various advantages, better jury pool

for Donald Trump because you'll be drawing from a wider swath of Georgia than just Fulton County. But more importantly, once you get it over into federal court, you are basically on the doorstep of an outright dismissal because, as you say, there's something called immunity, which is that you cannot be criminally prosecuted for something you did under color of law, meaning, again, essentially in the course of your job. Meadows has a better argument because Meadows will say, what am I charged with doing here? I set up a bunch of phone calls. I connected the president with people. I talked to state officials. I did it all at the behest of the president while I was chief of staff. So I was essentially carrying out my job duties, maybe not in a perfect way,

maybe not in the way everyone would have liked, but I was basically trying to do my job. as White House Chief of Staff. You know, the comeback will be, no, you weren't, you were committing crimes. It's a little bit circular from prosecutors. They're saying, we've charged you with crimes, therefore you weren't doing your job. You were committing crimes. Right. But he's got a more colorable argument.

You know, Donald Trump has a shot on this one. I wouldn't say a good shot, but a chance. And he'll say, well, as chief executive as president, I had responsibility to, according to the Constitution, take care that the laws are faithfully executed. And he'll say, you know, we ask the elections are administered by the states. But a president can have a role in elections. I mean, you know, Lyndon Johnson, I think it was, sent in the National Guard to make sure the elections were, you know, people weren't being denied the right to vote. Not that this is not that this is that same scenario. But the point is, the president can have some role in making sure there are fair elections. And Trump may say, again, you know, you probably don't like the way I did this. Maybe I did this in an ham-handed, you know, obnoxious, ridiculous manner. But what I was trying to do was do my job as president. I think prosecutors have a much stronger comeback here. you were not. You were trying, as a candidate and a private citizen, you were trying to steal this election. So that's going to be up to the federal judges. But this is more than just procedural wrangling.

This is more than just which courthouse is the trial going to be held in. This is potentially, does the case survive or not as to those individuals? If Trump manages to get his case moved to federal court and then he is reelected president, does that make this all pardonable for him, where he can pardon himself, or does that not matter? This is so good. I was just talking about this with one of our show teams. This is like a law school hypo on top of a law school hypo. Like, I guarantee you no one's even thought of this in a law school hypothetical, although they will now. I mean, the answer is we don't know. Anyone who tells you they know doesn't know because it's never happened and has never even been really seriously considered. I guess the argument would be, you can see the arguments both ways, right? Because what would happen is the state charges would basically be picked up and moved across the street. They don't get converted into federal. Some of these don't have a federal counterpart. Okay. Right. So, So you would say the argument against the president being able to pardon is these are state convictions. He was convicted under Georgia state law. The argument for the president being able to pardon would be, yes, in a federal court.

So I couldn't even begin to resolve that argument for you. But that's a great hypothetical. And again, Donald Trump makes all the hypotheticals come true. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, we live in interesting times and bizarre times. So as of now, the judge who's been assigned to this trial is Scott McAfee, who's only been in that position. for like six months. He graduated law school in 2013. When I saw that, I said, oh, I feel like I'm 140 years old. Yeah, that is just depressing. Does this give any credence to the change of

venue arguments, or is this just, this has nothing to do with that? Can they say, well, it's sort of an inexperienced judge? Oh, no, no, that's not enough to move venue. No. There's actually an interesting change of venue argument in D.C., which I think will fail. But, you know, Trump's lawyers have said, oh, he wants to move the case to West Virginia, right? I wonder why. By the way, Trump got five point something percent of the vote in D.C. and 68 percent in West Virginia, so that might have something to do with it. You know, they're going to say, well, January 6th was a huge event for the city and it's going to be inflammatory. I don't think that's going to be enough to cut it, but there is an interesting analogy, or not analogy, but an interesting historical example of Oklahoma City bombing was initially slated to be tried in the courtroom, the federal courtroom, the federal courtroom, the federal building, the courthouse building was damaged and several courthroom. courtroom staffers were injured. And so initially the judge said, no, we're going to keep it here. And

then the appeals court said, no, no, no, no, this is too much. And they moved it to Colorado. But I would reject a comparison between Oklahoma City and in this case. I think it's different altogether. Okay. Yeah, I figured it wouldn't matter, but I was curious. Just having a relatively young judge is not going to do it now. Okay. That poor guy would never be able to keep a case. I know. I know. And then you never get experience. And then you're, No, anyway. Exactly. What do we know about him? Do we know much about him? You know, a bit, again, he's young. I'm trying to think if he graduated law school in 2013, that would make him in his mid to low 30s. My God. He actually worked in Fonnie Willis's office

as an ADA. You know, he has, if anything, conservative leanings. I think he was part of the Federalist Society when he was in law school or maybe after law school. I tend to think that kind of stuff's a little overrated. I don't think that because someone's in the Federalist Society, They're going to be in the bag for Donald Trump. First of all, it's just not the job. Judges, they don't owe anything to Donald Trump or anyone else. And really, I do think the vast majority of judges, I'm very cynical towards our U.S. Supreme Court. But the vast majority of our judges are your state and federal level trial judges and intermediate appellate judges.

I know a lot of them personally. They're like umpires in baseball. They don't care who wins. You know, you always think the umpire, oh, why is it rooting against my team? They don't care who the only interest they have is in getting it right and not getting reversed, or, you know, whether by replay as an umpire or by an appellate court here. So I do think I wrote a piece a couple weeks ago about the two other Judge Cannon down in Florida who Trump appointed and Judge Chutkin in D.C., who Obama appointed.

And I sort of made the point of like, I think everyone's getting a little too riled up about these folks. You know, Trump's got, Trump, of course, is way over the top. So, oh, Chuckin will never give me a fair trial. She's Obama, this and that. And the other side, you know, there's been some hysterical shrieking about Canon as well. Oh, she's a Trump nominee, this and that. And I say, like, let's just give both of these people, who, by the way, have quite a bit in common if you really look at their histories.

They're both first generation immigrants who really, you know, broke a lot of barriers in making it to the bench. They both have long histories trying cases. One was a defender. Judge Chutkin was a public defender. Judge Cannon was a prosecutor. They know what they're doing. Like, let's just give them all the benefit of the doubt unless and until they prove otherwise. And let's not flip out the first time one of them makes a decision that we don't like.

Like that's not necessarily evidence of bias or incontious. competence. Let's give them a presumption here. And I guess I would say the same thing for this, judge, who I know very little about in Georgia. Okay. Just adding to the bizarre surroundings of this case, Trump says he's going to present, quote, a large complex, detailed but irrefutable report on the presidential election fraud, which took place in Georgia. Yeah. He says he's going to present this on Monday, and this should lead to all the charges being dropped, Ellie. This is so ridiculous. It's so self-defeating. I can't believe his lawyers are going to let him do this, first of all, not that they can physically restrain him from doing it. Good. I can't wait to see this

irrefutable. Yeah, I do think that's what's going to happen. I think he's going to give this press conference. We're going to watch it and go, oh, my God, he's right. There is massive fraud. And then I think all the prosecutors are going to dismiss their cases and write him letters of apology. I think that's how it's going to play out. You heard it here first. Yeah, there you go. This is the stupidest idea I've ever heard. I'd be shocked if he actually did it. Obviously, whatever quote-to-quote evidence he offers up will be ridiculous and it's only going to hurt his cause. Yeah. I mean, have you ever seen a defendant act like this? No, in so many respects. I mean, look at the public, not comments, attacks on the judge,

the prosecutors, the witness. And by the way, there's going to come a moment in one of these cases. And I feel like the DC case with Judge Shuckin is probably the one that's most asking for it, where someone's going to have to put a foot down with this guy. Because a normal defendant, look, you are absolutely allowed to criticize your process. prosecuted publicly, criticize your judge, question them. But when it gets to the point of attacking and threatening and inciting potential violence against people, it's way over the line. And ordinarily, a judge would bring a person like that right in and lambase the person, potentially increase their bail. This won't happen here. But even in extreme scenario, imprison the person.

People do violate their bail and get locked up. It just happened to San Bakerman Free to me, different scenarios. But judges don't play around with this. And if you flagrantly violate a condition of release, you're playing with fire. Again, Trump's not, I think it's delusional to say that Trump's going to get locked up on a bail violation, but the judges here have to do something. And it's a tough one for prosecutors because they don't really want to get involved in this and it gets into speech issues. And, you know, so I'm sure that they're having discussions in those offices of like how much of this can we tolerate before we go to a judge and ask for some action. Yeah, I've been saying the same thing. Trump is not going to end up in jail and that is unbelievable

wishcasting on the part of some people. But they're having to be. has to be a step in between throwing him in jail and just letting him continue to do this. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, again, for a normal defendant, it's pretty darn scary to have your judge call you in and give you a tongue lashing. Right. I don't know that Trump would give a crap about that. Yeah. So I don't know how you handle him as a judge. I mean, there are intermediate measures. You know, you can oppose home confinement. I don't know how realistic that is here. Look, maybe a judge, I'm just thinking sort of at top of my head. but a judge could call him in and say, Mr. Trump, I'm making a finding here that these social

media postings violated my order. I'm going to make it crystal clear to you. You are not to post anything that, you know, blank, blank, blank, blank. And if you do, I'm telling you right now, I may lock you up or something like that. I don't know. Again, I don't think that's likely to happen, but you could go with sort of threats, incremental discipline. Managing Donald Trump as a lawyer is not easy. Managing Donald Trump as a judge has got to be also incredibly difficult. Yeah, it seems insane. All right. Before I, I let you go. I know asking about timeframes is kind of a mugs game, but you brought it up earlier. So I think it's really important. Yeah. I'm going to treat you as a hostile witness.

How does this fit in with the other Trump cases? And is there any way this can be wrapped up by November of next year? Because that seems absurd. Fonnie Willis, absolutely no way. First of all, the prime trial dates are already taken. Manhattan, the hush money case already has March, which will go into April. And the Mar-a-Lago case already has May, which will go into June and July. Now, I think it's fair to say we're not going be having a trial in September October before a November election. That's just way too close to the election for all parties. So that really doesn't leave any opportunity. Now, some of these dates could move. Any trial date, you should always just write in pencil because they always do get moved. They rarely get moved earlier. That's almost unhurt. It's like an airport delay. You know, you'll never

say like, oh, our plane is now 45 minutes earlier to leave. Like, you can't do that. Alvin Bragg, who has the May and April dates, has publicly been broadcasting that he's willing to consider moving off those dates or asking to move off those dates if necessary. And I think if push comes to shove, he will do that. Fannie Willis's case to me. I mean, Ty Cobb, you know, the former Trump lawyer who goes on air quite frequently and almost always just bashes Trump and gives the absolute worst case scenario for Trump. I'm not quite sure how he gets away with that with a former client where you have a continuing duty of loyalty. But even he said the other day, this case is going to take two years before they even get to trial. There's 19 defendants. You have these removal motions. You have so much discovery. So I think Fonnie Willis,

case has very little close to zero chance of being tried before the election. I also think Alvin Bragg is going to come off of his date. I do think it's very likely that we see one or both of Jack Smith's trials before the election. I mean, Judge Chutkin in particular, every word out of her mouth seems to be pushing towards like, we're going to get this in. We're going to get this done. And we'll find out the answer to that soon because DOJ has asked for a January 2nd, 2004 trial, which to me is a little unrealistic, quite unrealistically fast. Trump is. going to put in his reply pretty soon. He will probably ask for a trial never. Right. But I think the judge, you know, a power move by the judge here would be,

the federal judge, Chutkin, would be to just schedule it right on top of the Manhattan DA's case. Just say, we're March also. Obviously, he can't be in both places at once, but that's going to basically force the Manhattan DA. And again, he has publicly invited this to go into his judge and say, judge, we have a conflict with the federal court. Generally speaking, federal stuff takes precedence over state stuff. And their charge is, obviously way more important than the hush money case. So that would actually be an aggressive but feasible move by me for the judge to just say, look, we're going to double track it, trial date to move all the time. Prosecutors, maybe you want to call over there and see if they're willing

to move it or something like that. Man, that's a lot. Ellie Honig, thank you so much. You always explain stuff in a way that even a dunderhead like me can understand. And I really appreciate you coming on. And hopefully you'll come on again for the next round of indictments. Thank you. Oh, my gosh. I saw something today, a headline of, is Arizona going to charge next? And I was like, please just for all of us, no. Like, we just don't need a fifth indictment. Trump doesn't need a fifth. I think this is one area where the country can unify, which is we just don't need a fifth

indictment. Nobody wants that, I don't think. Yeah. Maybe there's some people who want them all. Who knows? Thanks, Ellie. All right, Eddie. Good to talk to me.

Andy. Andy Levy. Daniel Moody. Andy Levy. How are you closing? out this good, good indictment week in America. I am going to close it out by doing the fuck-back guy segment. Which I forgot to name. Great. I'm so glad for you. I'm exhausted.

I know. We all are. I'm going to go back to an old standby, Marjorie Taylor Green. Oh, God. She is not happy with Georgia's governor, Brian Kemp, who has been at least one little bright spot has been very clear about going after Donald Trump for meddling in the 2020 election and, you know, he has not gone after Fawney Willis and has been, you know, I think he's bad on everything else, but he's actually been okay on this. Anyway, she is so mad at him that she is now saying that she may consider challenging him if he runs for Georgia Senate in 2026. But she had to add a caveat to that because She said she hasn't made up her mind. And then she said she has a lot of things to think about.

And she said, as reported in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, am I going to be part of President Trump's cabinet if he wins? Is it possible that I'll be VP? So she is really setting her sights, is old Marge. It's really something to think that this batshit crazy congresswoman is now sitting there trying to decide between running for Senate or maybe being VP or in a presidential cabinet. And the thing is, I would like to say she's insane for thinking any of that could happen, but she's not. I know. I don't know that she would be the VP candidate, although I have,

I floated that idea like a long time ago on this podcast. I think she might be a little too much for him as a VP pick, but maybe not. And I could definitely see him putting her in charge of the cabinet. Can you picture her running like the Department of Education? I just threw up in my mouth. I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you. I would actually like to apologize to our listeners for even putting that out into the world. But it's a really real possibility. So I'm just going to end by saying, fuck Marjorie Taylor Green and fuck the entire Republican Party right now. Right now end to abstention.

The idea that Marjorie Taylor Green should be in a padded room, deciding between whether or not she wants to be a ballerina or go. to the moon. But the fact that she's not and could very well be either a VP pick, which is like, what? You know what I'm saying? Like, what? Or a senator and replace who? Oh, for the love of fucking God, I hate it here. Well, but I'm sure that your fuck that guy to end this week will bring us back to a more pleasant reality. Well, the both of us, earlier this week, we went with unknowns for our fuck that guy. And now, you know, it's just like oldie but goody, you know? So yes, my fuck that guy to end the week is a forever fuck that guy like minted. He is in marble, encased in stone for our hall of assholes. Ron DeSantis is doing his best to try and

pretend to be human. And so he is doing these interviews where he oddly and uncomfortably talks about his wife and his children. So when asked in an interview with Time Magazine, what he would do if, quote, one of his children turns out to be gay or trans, he responded with this, Andy, and said, quote, well, my children are my children. We'll leave that. We'll leave that between my wife and I. Oh, is that right, you motherfucker? For your family, it is okay for you to make decisions about your children and your relationship with your children and how and if you will love them for who the fuck they are. But for everyone else, you feel like you have the power

and the place to insert yourself into other people's homes and into other people's lives to dictate to them how they should treat their queer kids. Do I have that right? And of course, there was no fucking follow-up here because apparently they don't teach them. that in journalism school. But the reality here is that Ron DeSantis is a fucking hypocrite as well as spineless, as well as a punk, which we have said multiple times over. And so for you to boldly say

here, oh, that will be between my wife and I, then leave every other person's children and how they want to care for their children and how they want to love their children and how they want to protect their children from fucking bigots like you between them in their families as well. And so for that reason and so many others that we get into on a regular basis on this show, Ron DeSantis remains, my forever, fuck that guy. Yeah, I mean, yes to everything you just said. But also, if someone asks you what you would do if one of your children turns out to be gay or trans, the only correct answer to that is, I will love.

love them and support them the same way I do now. That's a no-brainer. Like, if you can't even say that, I mean, you don't need to go into details. You can say whatever you want or not after that. But that is the very first thing that should come out your mouth. And the fact that he can't even do that, like, this guy should not be anywhere near the office of the presidency. He also shouldn't be anywhere near the office of the governorship of Florida, but that's on them, not me. To me, it's just disgusting to not just right off the bat say that and let your kids know, you know, because he has young children. And guess what? One or more of them may turn out to be gay or trans.

And my guess is that they are going to remember that he didn't say that he would love and support them if they were. That's an awful thing to do to your kids. The other thing I would add is, I guess the one area where he's not a fascist is he's not a grammar Nazi, because he says, leave that between my wife and I, and we all know it should be between my wife and me. And I mean, the one area where if you have fascist tendencies, you should use them is grammar. And that's the one area where he doesn't. And so fuck him. Amazing.

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