The Daily Beast Podcast - The Looming Standoff in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Case

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

“The Washington Post” reporter Devlin Barrett joins The New Abnormal to discuss what happens next in the former president’s contentious classified documents case. Plus, a conversation with Cornell Belcher, the founder of Brilliant Corners Research & Strategies, about all the reasons to ignore recent polling which shows Black and Hispanic voters may be moving to the right. 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 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 Kedinan, 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.

Washington Post reporter Devlin Barrett joins us to unpack Judge Alien Cannon's recent ruling in the Trump's document case. And yes, it is that confusing. Then president of Brilliant Corners Research and Strategies, Cornell Belcher, is here to talk about recent polls saying that younger minorities are aligning with the far right. And he'll remind us to stop obsessing over the point. polls. But first, let's have some fun. Danielle, do you have $230,000 I can borrow? Yes, let me check my couch cushions. Okay, good, because what I want to do is I want to pay one day's worth of legal bills for Donald Trump. Because according to new reporting, that's how much Donald Trump's pack has been paying, or paid rather, in the month of February towards his legal bills.

$230,000 a day, a day. I would love to have $230 a day that I could just spend on shit. It is just unbelievable. This is Trump's Save America pack, and it paid $5.6 million to lawyers in February, according to Roger Salenberger and Reese Gorman at The Daily Beast. And that is more than the amount of money it took in in the same period. It took in $5 million, and it paid out $5.5.4. $1.6 million just to lawyers. It is just absolutely unbelievable the amount of cash he is burning through just on legal bills. But I guess now that all his flunkies control the Republican National Committee, that's where they can come in and help out with this. Let's just put this into perspective for people for a minute, the $230,000 a day burn rate is that the average national income in this country,

the average income for a year of working is $59,384. He is burning, like, what is that? Because tell me about my math, two and a half times that a day. It's like four and a half times. Is that four and a half times that? This is why my math teacher, you know, rest their soul is probably laughing. But it's obscene. And the fact is that they should fucking have to change the name of the pack to save Trump

pack because what about America is he saving? He don't have any money left. over to help out Americans because every bit of money that is it's going to his legal defense. And that's what's crazy is that there is no money. And this is what makes me nervous. And this is why we should ask bigger questions. Because the Biden campaign is on a fundraising spree right now since the state of the union. They are flush with cash.

Right. Donald Trump is flush with debt. And every bit of money that is coming in, it's not going to radio ads. It's not going to promote. of the campaign or any ideology whatsoever, it is going to keep him out of jail. And because his tactics with the lawyers is delay, delay, delay, like, they just sit back and rack up this cash, right? Like the dumb, dumb lawyer that he had in New York City, he owes her $675,000. To do what exactly? Because she did a terrible fucking job. Lena Habba, whatever her name is. She is very terrible at her job.

But she's sitting there looking smug as shit in court because they are running up the fees. So every time that Trump does a delay, every time that there is an appeal, the law firms just keep that cash register going. And so looking around, they say, oh, Donald Trump is so rich, but every bit of his money is tied up in real estate that Tish James is about to seize come Monday. Unless, I don't know, some really benevolent, and I use that in quotation, Marks, billionaire comes in from maybe Saudi Arabia, maybe Russia, maybe Hungary to come in and try and bail Donald Trump out because let me ask you something. Where are all his billionaire friends? How come nobody wants to pony up the money for him?

I hear that. Donald Trump claims to be a billionaire. Donald Trump claims to be richer than all these people. So why would they give him half a billion dollars? It is insane to me that Mark Levin and people like that are blaming other people for this mess. Like, if Trump really has all the billions of dollars he says he has, he should be able to come up with half a billion dollars in cash. I don't care what his holdings are in, whether it's real estate, etc. The bottom line there is, do you really want to take real estate as collateral for him to

appeal a case in which it was found that he inflated the worth of his real estate? You would have to be an incredible level of gullible and stupid to fall for that, which doesn't rule everybody out. in Trump world. Right, I was going to say. Right now, if you are donating to Trump, you are donating to his legal bills. And I guess there are people who are okay with that because, you know, they believe him when he writes witch hunt in all capital letters on his asinine truth social. Every time we talk about this, I'm just flabbergasted that there is a guy who is the nominee for a major political party in America who very well might win the next election, who is having to pay $200,000. $38,000 a day in legal fees because there are so many cases against him and there are so many

judgments against him. This is where we are now and it is just, it is absolutely wild that the Republican Party is okay with it and that a hell of a lot of people in this country are okay with it. And you can only shake, grab people by the lapels and shake them so much. And after a while, it's like, you know, you're on your own. I don't know what to say to you anymore. He's not grabbing them by the lapels. He's definitely grabbing them by the ankles and shaking them upside down. No, I'm saying we can't grab these people by the lapels and sort of like try to snap them back to reality.

Yeah, I agree with you. Oh, I don't care. I'm like, they can go broke. I know. I know what I'm saying? Like, I'm happy with 30% of the country. You want to throw your money. You want to throw your good, hard-earned money at Donald Trump to pay for your Messiah's legal

fees by all means. What I find really funny about this, because at some time I have to be. to laugh so that I don't just cry myself to sleep at night at the state of American politics. But like, what is funny about this is the fact that literally this is Donald Trump's last big heist. Because if he was not running for president, where is Donald Trump setting up all of these other slush funds in order to pay for his legal fees? Where would Donald Trump? If Donald Trump was not running for president right now, where is he getting the $91 million that he put up? in bond in the E. Jean Carroll case. Where is he getting, right, the nearly when you add in the interest

that keeps accruing every single day, where is he putting up the over $500 million? There would be no packs. There would be no slush funds. There would be no R&C takeover. So without him running for president, the only thing this son of a bitch can do is make up a go fund me. Like that's like, And I'm like, how do you overstate this for the masses that like, this is Donald Trump's biggest heist? And this is also when criminals are their most dangerous. Like, that's the thing that I want, you know, and this is what Andrew Weissman said on Morning Joe recently where he's like, we can't ever count Donald Trump out because he's like a fucking cat with like nine million lives because there is going to be somebody that could possibly be waiting in the bushes.

Pts, hey Donald, hey Donald, you know, come over here. You do me, 464 million favors and I got you. Right. So it's like, it's funny in one respect, just like the place that we find ourselves in, but it is also extraordinarily dangerous because as the clock runs out to November, so does the heist. And then what does he do? Yeah, absolutely. And look, we've already seen this with the complete 180 he did on a TikTok ban as soon as, you know, someone heavily invested in TikTok

gave him a bunch of money. Suddenly he went from being very much in favor of a TikTok ban to being very much against a TikTok ban. And everything about this guy is for sale and always has been. And you're right. This is, he's at the point now where it's like if you're watching a TV show or whatever or a movie and it's the criminal who says he's not going back to jail and becomes very very. dangerous because of it because he'll do anything to not go back to jail, including commit murder or whatever. This is sort of that situation. Like, as you said, this is his last big score. And he's sort of out of other options because if he's not president, in addition to all the money he's losing, all of these other cases against him will proceed, whether it's the one down in Florida with the classified documents, whether it's the one out of D.C., you know, all these cases that, again, if he becomes president, he can pretty much magically make go away. All of those will

proceed if he loses in November. And he knows this. So beyond even the money, there is nothing he won't do to win this election or not win the election necessarily, but to be declared the winner of the election. Right. Because he has no choice. He sort of has to win in November or a lifetime of Grifting may actually catch up with him. It's just crazy because I want to say that's the only saving grace that we have left, right? Like, it isn't the courts that are going to run Donald Trump down, right? It's going to be the clock, right? It's going to be the clock versus the American people and our apathy at our current state of politics.

It's going to be like that final buzzer, like, is America going to show up? And if we do, like we did in 2020 in the middle of a pandemic, Donald Trump is cooked. And with that, the Republican Party that has invested every single bit of energy and money into this man. Yeah. You've got an entire sort of ecosystem, if you want to call it that, because it's not just Trump. It's the Republican Party, like you said. It's even the conservative media ecosystem that is so invested in Donald Trump winning in November. And there is, again, literally, I would say there is nothing they won't do to try to make that happen. up to and including stealing the election, which he tried to do in 2020. So there's no world in which it is an exaggeration to say that Trump is going to try to steal the 2024 election,

because he's already done it once. And it's even more important to him personally this time. So of course he's going to try to do it again. And the Republicans have people in places in some states that you would not want them to have in order to get accurate election results. And the whole thing is really, really frightening. Can we talk about something more fun? And that is imagining what assets Tish James might seize from Trump,

which she, if he doesn't come up with this bond over the weekend, season, season can start on Monday. Yes, it is the March Madness that I am most excited about. She can literally, she can go after 40 Wall Street, Trump Tower, all of the ones that when you do the actual real math in New York City and not Trump math, the Trump math that got him into this place in the first place. But if you do real math, it's about five or six buildings in New York that would add up to the 460, which is without interest. So she could keep going. It's unreal.

Look, I should point out, I don't want to make it sound like Tish James can just start grabbing buildings on Monday. It's a long process and it involves courts and it involves liens being put on the property. It's a whole thing. But she can start the process on Monday. I'm not saying she will. Oh, she will. But she. I'm like, barring her receiving a check certified in the mail from Trump, she's going to start.

And like it doesn't look like, you know, what we see on the streets of New York City with mattresses sadly. or with clothing bundled up and thrown out by landlords, which I wish, not that for people in New York, but for Donald Trump, I absolutely wish to see that. But the process, just, I mean, there wouldn't be a catch-up bottle safe in Mar-a-Lago on Monday. Yeah. Like, I would not want to be the cleaning staff in Mar-a-Lago on Monday

if Donald Trump doesn't manage to weasel his way out of this. And I pray that he does not. Do you know? Like I would actually, maybe the new abnormal should send him a case of Heinz catch up. That would be amazing. Love Andy and Daniel. Go at it. I'm all for it. I just wanted to let people know that they shouldn't expect to see Moody Tower on Monday. Yes. It's going to take a while. It's going to take a while. But you keep Pope alive. Meanwhile, in another way that Republicans are trying to take money from elderly people besides them contributing to Donald Trump's legal fund, House Republicans are now calling for raising

the Social Security retirement age and also for restructuring Medicare. This is, of course, after they have steadfastly said they would never do any such thing, it's starting to seem like their word isn't worth anything. I don't know. I know I get accused of being too cynical, so I'll back off of that. But this is not going to be law anytime soon, but it is a budget that has been released by what's called the Republican Study Committee, which is made up of over 170 House Republican lawmakers. And it is just, again, it's just another way in which this so-called populism of the Republicans is not looking out for the actual populace.

Yeah, during Biden's state of the union, when he articulated just that fact that if you allow Republicans to get back into the White House, that they are going to come for Social Security, they are going to come for Medicaid, they're going to come for social safety nets. And they all sat there and booed. Oh, no. And Biden looked at them and said, oh, is that not true? Is that not what I read in your fucking report? It's just a matter of, is it that they don't read their own bullshit or they're just hoping that the rest of us don't read it? Are they just praying that most of America is just too tied up in the day-to-day grind that we're not paying attention to the ways in which they're actually working to make it harder for us to live? And so, you know, I look at this and I say, again, they are writing the Biden campaigns as, for them. Just take them, take their words, take the pieces of the report, and put them up on billboards in the swing states. Like, that's all you need. Because raising the retirement age, if you are a person that is 60 right now, which is largely like the elder Republican base, you're five years away from

retirement and these motherfuckers are getting ready to pull the rug out from under you, right? They're getting ready to say, oh, well, now you did too well. So we're going to rejigger things around so that you don't get as much back as you put in. It's really sick and it's disgusting because what they want is to create a permanent underclass in this country. I always bring it up. Terrible movie, but Ellicium, like this is what they want. It's where the wealthy and the healthy are up somewhere in a bubble. and they turn America into a basic death trap with disease and hunger and poor water, poor infrastructure, and they think that it's not going to come back to bite them. They think that somehow, like, this is what the future is going to be.

And I tell you, a majority of people do not want this future. Yeah, I wouldn't think so. But look, the Republicans are sort of in a bind because if you don't want to raise taxes or if you want to lower taxes for multimillionaires and billionaires, You've got to save money somewhere, so why not take it away from people who have paid into a system their whole life who actually need Social Security to survive on? So they're sort of backed into a corner because they have these policies that just favor the ultra wealthy so much, while at the same time they sit there and pretend to be populists. And somehow have, including Donald Trump, who somehow has pulled the wool over a lot of Americans' eyes. who think that he fights for them and he stands for them when all he stands for is himself and

as a side effect of helping himself can help out his fellow ultra wealthy people. And he said what the fuck he said. So there it is. We're done. Earlier this week, the federal judge overseeing the Donald Trump classified documents case issued a ruling that many legal experts found strange to say the least. Here to explain is reporter Devlin Barrett, who focuses on national security and law enforcement for the Washington Post. Devin, thank you so much for joining us. Hey, thanks for having me. So let's start with the basics. What was Judge Aline Cannon's ruling? So her ruling was basically telling the prosecutors and defense lawyers in the Trump classified documents case to offer to her

by April 2nd essentially proposed jury instructions that would reflect essentially two legal scenarios, two legal interpretations of how the Presidential Records Act might affect how a jury thinks about the evidence in this case. Okay, so I took a look at these orders and correct me if I'm wrong or if I'm reading them wrong, but both orders, she's asking the attorneys for both sides to, quote, unquote, engage with two possible jury instructions that she is proposing. One of these instructions would be her telling jurors, quote, make a factual finding as to whether the government had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the records that Donald Trump took with him when he left office are personal or presidential. And the other is the other proposed jury instruction is that

she tell them that a president has sole authority under the Presidential Records Act to categorize records as personal or presidential during his or her presidency. And that neither are, nor a jury is permitted to make a review such a categorization decision. Do I have that right, first of all? You have described them correctly. Okay. Neither of these are good interpretations, right? The Presidential Records Act is very clear about what is presidential and what is personal, and a president can't just wave his or her hand and say, oh, this is personal. And on top of that, the classified documents of the kind found at Mar-a-Lago fall squarely into the presidential box, it seems. Right. Part of the reason why I've now written two stories about this order is because I think

this order is one of the strangest things I've ever seen in 20 plus years of covering federal law enforcement and federal courts. I basically set out to talk to a bunch of former judges and lawyers because I sort of start with the premise of what do I not understand here? And maybe someone who's maybe can explain it to me. And overwhelmingly, all the people I talk to describe their own confusion, their own bewilderment and their own, frankly, deep concern that this is not how this is done ever. And that's because she's offered two legal scenarios, essentially legal interpretations of how the Presidential Records Act should be applied to this case, which is in this case, to be clear, is about violations of the Espionage Act, which is a criminal law.

And how, frankly, her description of the law in both these scenarios is, I think almost every national security lawyer would say, her description of the law in both these scenarios is deeply, deeply flawed. And to be fair, I think the first one is partly wrong and strange. The second one seems to suggest that this case should and could never have been brought at all. And the second one, I think, is more alarming in that way. But to be honest, both scenarios are just very strange. And I'll put it this way. One of the former judges I spoke to said, you know, put it very bluntly, in 30 years, he'd never seen any order like this. Yeah, it's absolutely amazing. Like you said, this is a case. It's not that the Presidential Records Act, I guess, isn't involved because Trump has been flouting this argument that he was allowed to take

these documents. But we're talking here about the Espionage Act, and the fact is that a lot of these documents were classified information. If I read your piece correctly, when the experts that you're talking to are saying, hey, this case is actually about the Espionage Act, it means it doesn't ultimately matter whether the records are presidential or personal, he still had classified documents in locations that were not secure. Well, exactly. And part of Trump's argument, and to be clear, the defense should be able to make any sort of argument it wants to make. A big part of Trump's argument in this case has been that the Presidential Records Act allows him to declare even highly classified documents to be his personal property and do whatever he wants with them. That is part.

part of their defense. I think what is so jarring about this particular order is the degree to which the judge seems to just sort of, in one of these scenarios, just accept that at face value and say, okay, give me jury instructions as if that were true. And first of all, you know, that is not the law. It just isn't. It's not a media reporter saying it. That's her own appeals court, the 11th Circuit saying it. That's an entire, you know, long history of case law saying that. And two, you know, part of what I think is so confusing about this order for lawyers in particular is none of this is the time to be trying to figure out jury instructions. She has so many of these big legal questions in front of her that she hasn't decided. And I think what's so strange is she seems to be trying to push the legal questions onto the jury. And just as a reminder to people, that's not how the system works. Legal issues are decided by the judge and fact issues are decided by the jury. She seems in this order, she seems to be mixing and matching those categories in a very, I would say, atypical way is the nice way to say it.

And that is part of why there's so much concern because this isn't how you do this, even if you were to sort of engage in a thought exercise. And to be 100% clear, judges engage in sort of interesting thought experiments all the time. That is just a part of being a judge for many judges, but not like this. Yeah. And, you know, on top of all that, because, yeah, the procedural stuff seems very weird to me. and the idea that she's worried about jury instructions, you know, at this stage, that just strikes me as odd. But in a sense, isn't she asking, in this case, really? Because both of these jury instructions sort of, it seems to me, favor the defense.

And so isn't she asking the prosecution to sort of help the defense in this case? I think what she's saying, and I'll be super curious to see how prosecutors respond to this order, because obviously prosecutors do what judges tell them to do. Sure. But in this instance, what she's telling them to do is assume, at least as a scenario, that the defense is absolutely right that the Presidential Records Act essentially guts your case and makes this an unwinnable, unchargeable, unpersuable prosecution. Assume that's true and then write jury instructions for that scenario.

Well, I think a prosecutor could reasonably say, Your Honor, we have spent this entire case telling you, that's not the case, not the law. And if we were to agree with that, we would never have filed these charges to begin with. I don't think rationally you can really expect the prosecutors to sort of embrace, even if this is a thought experiment, I don't think you can realistically expect the prosecutors to embrace this particular thought experiment. And how they respond to this, I'll be very curious to say. Yeah, you mentioned earlier that for the piece you co-wrote, I guess, at the Washington Post, You talk to a number of experts, lawyers who understand this stuff backwards and forwards. Give me some examples of their responses to what Judge Cannon has done.

So there's a bunch of different ways that this leaps out at former judges and national security lawyers. One way I sort of already mentioned, which is, you know, jury instruction is a thing you talk about right before the trial's about to start. It's not a thing you talk about before you've decided, you know, where the sort of legal lines are going to be on the playing. field. You know, a lot of what judges do in their pretrial process is they say, okay, you guys can talk and argue about this. This other thing over here, that's out of bounds. We're not going to engage on that for this trial. Cannon hasn't done most of that work yet. So one, one judge said it's putting the cart before the horse in just terms of how a trial is run. Two, it sort of contradicts the basic rulings of the 11th Circuit above her, of other jurisdictions about how the Espionage Act works,

what the Presidential Records Act says and doesn't say, and more importantly. And so it just seems to be a significant misstatement of the law. That's the other thing. And the other part, which is a little trickier, and I think you always have to be careful when you're covering these things not to try to make guesses or assumptions about people's motives. But the other thing that I find, and some of the people I spoke to found very alarming and concerning about this particular order, is she's not issuing a ruling that the prosecutor's can really appeal in any way. If you follow this to what seems to be in the direction it's

heading, if you follow this order in the direction it's heading, this would be a gutting of the case without actually ruling to gut the case. Interesting. And I think from a prosecutor's point of view, it's reasonable to be alarmed about, look, some judges don't like our cases. That happens all the time. It's frustrating, but it's not the end of the world. But most of those judges actually rule against us. And I think one of the ways in which legal experts are concerned about this particular order at this particular time is this is not really an appealable situation. And if she is really going to be very antagonistic or critical of the premise of the entire case, I think from a prosecutor's point of view, you need to think about, okay, well, when do we have a

ruling we can appeal? And what some of the folks I spoke to said, they were concerned about is not only is this not good for the prosecution, not only does this seem unfair in the context of national security law as it's been practiced for decades. But it also doesn't come with a real ruling that you can appeal. And that may be a way to bog the whole problem down. The other way in which this is alarming to legal experts and including former judges is if this is the kind of thing that she's going to do in the pretrial and this is the way she's going to proceed through this pretrial hearings, a lot of the experts are very skeptical that you will see a trial on this case this year. This is not the pace you would move at or the way you would move through these issues to get

to a trial anytime soon. And so that's another layer of concern and why, you know, the people who have done this for a long time are so concerned about this particular order. I actually was going to ask you if this was appealable the way that it feels like it was 20 years ago, but it wasn't that Judge Kattan's earlier order that a special master be appointed to review the records Trump has. That was appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which pretty much smacked her down and said, no, we don't have to do that. But Jack Smith can't do that. But Jack Smith can't do that. here. It feels like a stretch to me so far. I mean, could he in theory try that? Sure. But this is a very sort of small bore. In some ways, it's a small ask to make of the lawyers. So appealing this here,

to me, it feels like a bit of a stretch. I'm not saying it's impossible. It doesn't feel like the right kind of thing to try to take to the 11th Circuit appeals court. That's part of the reason why. I will be super curious to see how prosecutors respond to this, because there's a world in which prosecutors could say, Your Honor, we really can't embrace the hypothetical here because the hypothetical is so contrary to everything we know and think about the law and the facts here. And then you might be a bit of a standoff if they actually, you know, set a version of that to her. What does she do with that kind of response? Right. You know, there's a way in which this gets contentious. I'll be honest, at no point this far has the prosecution team signaled any willingness to just argue with the judge.

And I think that's very much in keeping with how the Justice Department works generally, how a lot of these prosecutors have worked all through their careers. My sense is that the prosecutors, in fact, do not want to fight with this judge. But I think a ruling, an order like this one, in some people's minds, signals that they may have to. For sure. It feels like there are two possible explanations for Judge Cannon's instruction. And I'm going to phrase this question in a way that I'm hoping you can answer it. One explanation is that she issued it maliciously in order to help Trump or delay the trial, etc. The other is that she simply doesn't understand the law. I'm not necessarily asking you to give

your opinion on this because I understand as a straight journalist that's not your thing to do. But I'll ask you what the people you talk to, the experts, the judges, the former national security law experts, what they seem to think. You know, one of things I try very hard to do as a reporter, especially, you know, when you cover courts, it's an adversarial system. So you're always getting dueling versions of things. And I think that's in some ways good training for reporting. I can't see inside her heart or her mind. I can only report out what she says and does and try to explain that as best I can without giving any assumptions about what her motivations are. I will say this. I think a lot of the people I've talked to keep going back and forth. between two explanations for what they're seeing. The first explanation, which is the more charitable explanation, is that this is a young judge without any major case experience. And she is simply nervous and unsure of how to proceed through what is obviously a complicated case of fact, a complicated case of law, and on top of all of that, obviously a very, very high profile case in which everyone's going to be watching in second guess. So there's that sort of what I think.

think of as the she's very green argument, meaning whatever the issues are that she is presenting as a judge, they are issues of experience and judgment and youth, essentially. The other argument, though, and this is the, I think the debate that people have been having about Judge Cannon ever since the special master issue you mentioned, is, is she doing these things because she actually just wants to believe some portion of Trump's arguments here. I think on the Presidential Records Act, she has shown repeatedly she's curious and open to the defense arguments involving the Presidential Records Act. Like, that's clearly a line of attack that Trump has used against this case that she is receptive

to. Again, whether that's ultimately about her level of experience or ultimately about something else, I don't think we can know right now. Those are the two dynamics. And as, you know, one of the lawyers I talked to about this particular order said, you know, at some point it doesn't matter. Because at some point, if you keep going down this road this way, the result could well be the same whatever her heart of heart intentions are. At some point, the people who believe this is a righteous case, you know, are increasingly worried that, you know, how long will it take to get to the end of this road. But to be clear, because I think part of this discussion also often involves a discussion of why doesn't special counsel Jack Smith just try to get a different judge?

I cannot emphasize enough how rare that is in the federal system and how high the standard has been historically for trying that. That's one of the things I talked about with various legal experts. And most of them felt like the bar there is so incredibly high. You're actually more likely to succeed if you appeal specific rulings to a higher court. and if a higher court gets mad enough, a higher court will just make the decision itself without you even asking. There are one of the former judges I spoke to did argue to me that it's time for Jack Smith to start the process of trying to get a different judge. But to be honest, that was one voice out of more than a half dozen I spoke to. And the rest of them all felt like that was neither practical, practical nor, you know, ripe as an illegal issue to raise now.

Well, you've now stolen the last question I was going to ask you. So I will dismiss you, but I will do it without prejudice. Ah, very nice of you, sir. So you can come back. Well played. Devlin, thanks so much. Your piece at the post, or I guess more than one piece at this point, like you said, was just fascinating to me and helped clear up a lot of stuff, as did this conversation.

I really appreciate you coming on. Thanks, Andy. I really appreciate it. Folks, I am very happy to welcome back on to the new abnormal writer, pollster, and political strategist, Cornell Belcher, who is the president of Brilliant Corners, research and strategies. You see him all the time on MSNBC and in other places. Cornell, recent polling that came out earlier this month, says that black and Hispanic voters are moving to the right. What do Democrats need to know about this new trend? And then a couple of

weeks later, an article comes out and says, don't get hyped up over the move by black and Hispanic voters to the right. Help us make sense of these stories that come out every election year. Is it something that we really need to be paying attention to and why? Well, first, thank you for having me back on and I really appreciate it.

I'm going to say a couple things here that are not going to be popular, but I think it should be instructive. First of all, and this is actually what I wrote an op-ed in LA Times about, last month. It is stop looking and publishing all these polls. Poles are not crystal balls. Polls do not predict the future. There's far, far too much coverage of polls in the media right now. And we should not be talking about polls because they're not predictive of the future. And the 22

red wave is a fucking case study of this. Is you have. people driving whatever political narrative they want to drive by using a polling number and cherry picking a polling number. And the fact that this shit is covered and some of the supposed cornerstone newspapers of our day is mind boggling to me. And every time I see a poll covered of a horse race, covered, which by the way, is the, least most important number in a poll. You know why Daniel is the least most important number in the poll? Because it's going to change. And we're going to literally spend a hundred million dollars in our presidential campaign to change that number. But yet we are here talking about a polling number,

which is not predictive and we know it's going to change and they're using it to drive whatever narrative. And again, this is how we got the inaccurate and insane red wave stories of 2020, when there was absolutely no red wave out there and in the broad spectrum of data, as I said numerous times, there's no red wave in this data. And sure enough, there was no red wave. Now, on the specifics of the sort of the black and brown people moving to the right. So, Danielle, I'm supposed to believe this, that a man who started his campaign by coming down to escalators and saying Mexicans are rapists and gang members, a man who has a long tradition of discrimination and racism and corruption, a man who's literally telling black and brown people that their family members being immigrants and themselves being immigrants are poisoning the blood of them. America and a man who is fundamentally mispositioned on the vast majority of issues having to deal with black and brown communities from where is he on voting rights? Is he for spending voting

rights or is he for blocking voting rights? Where is he on affirmative action? Is he for equity and inclusioning or is he against it? Where is he on the minimum wage? Where is he on college loans? You know, where is he on HBCU spending? Like from issue to issue to issue, he's fundamentally mispositioned. And he has a history of racism and discrimination. But somehow these fools want us to believe that this person, who, by the way, in most of my data, where you have most African-Americans actually think of him as a racist, this racist is going to outperform at the national level, George Bush and every Republican for the last 40 years.

If it doesn't make sense on the face of it, well, it doesn't make sense. I love it. And thank you so much for laying this out because hearing it from a pollster that this horse race and the way that is being covered is to drive a media narrative and is actually a knot about moving people from one station to the next. It's about moving clicks, right? And moving outrage, which fuels, And I think that it's important to say that because I'm somebody, I have said it on my podcast, on like a number of shows that polls are bullshit, particularly so far out. That I, that depending on how you ask questions where you're asking the question the time

a day through which device you're asking those questions, you will get a different result. And I think that why I think that it's important that things are framed this way is because I wonder, and you tell me, Cornell, if whether or not, when people, when voters, when they take in this information, when they are still looking to these cornerstone, you know, news outlets to provide them with the information that allows them to make informed decisions, because that's what voting is. It is an informed decision that you are making about your life. Do they see these numbers, though? And they say, well, Biden seems to be doing good. So I don't really have to do my part. Or Trump seems to be, you know, getting more black people or white people in blacks for Trump shirts, you know, to stand behind him.

So I need to do more work. Like, does it tip the scales in either way you think when people start to see the way that, you know, Kornacki is up at the big board every other day? Does it drive attention? And does that attention then drive engagement? Well, look, there's a lot of variables at play. And let me try to unpack some of it this way. Look, first of all, polling is useful for campaigns. It's useful because it's instructive. Again, it's not predictive. It is instructive. And it's how we build campaigns. Campaigns are largely problem-solving tools. Whatever problem you have, we build campaigns to solve for them.

Like I was telling one senator last week, no candidate six or seven months out from an election is where he or she needs to be an election. If that were true, we wouldn't need campaigns, and we wouldn't need to spend hundreds of million dollars on campaigns. You know, if you go back to the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012, where some of these same polls had Barack Obama losing to Mitt Romney, if not, and tied in some instances to Michelle Bachman, someone who most of your listeners won't even remember, but they're instructive. It tells us the work that we need to do. Look, if you look at where younger voters and you, and you, And if you're talking about younger voters today, you're talking about a group that is disproportionately to the overall electorate diverse and browner. If you're looking at younger voters right now, it is what I call the tipping generation. Because if you look at the Gen Zs and the millennials in the electorate, they are the tipping generation there where America's tipping from majority-wide to majority-minority minority. So if you're talking about younger voters, you're talking about a large group of diverse voters.

Is Joe Biden where he needs to be with these younger, more diverse voters right now? Now, hell no. Was in the beginning of 2012? Was Barack Obama where he needed to be with these younger browner voters? Hell no. You know what I heard going into 2012? Where's all the change that we voted for in 2000? Yep. Yep. I remember. Where's all the change, right? I'm just gulleled because I don't see any change. So in campaigns, it's about storytelling and which candidate has a good story to tell. We built a campaign in 2012 largely to tell Barack Obama's story and to move those younger, more diverse voters back into the column. You know, at the beginning of every campaign, younger voters are among the most disgruntled group of voters of all time, regardless of the campaign. If I look at where Joe Biden is right now with younger and diverse voters, is he where it needs to be?

No. But that's, again, instructive. They need to build a campaign to engage them and reach them and tell the story. And just side notes, again, I work for Obama in 08 and 12. Side note, I don't work for Biden. But side note here, Biden has a pretty damn good story to tell young people. That's my next question. If you look at the transformational legislation that he's moved, right?

He can make the argument that no president in modern history has done more around environmental issues than Joe Biden has. He has the most diverse government that we've ever seen. He said he put a black woman on Supreme Court. He put a black woman on Supreme Court. He is the president who's actually taking lead pipes out of our infrastructure. And you know what's been a real issue for people of color and their children? Let pipes, right? He is the one who's actually put more money in HBCUs than we've historically had.

He's the one who used executive order to ban choke holes and to ban no not. And so he has a damn good story to tell these young people of what he's been fighting for and what he wants to continue to fighting for in the future. Now, I want to pause on this narrative. that black people are moving to the right. Because if you look at the actual data on elections, again, there's no evidence of that, right? If you go back to 2020 and there's two sources, really, it's both the exit poll, but also Pew does this thing called validated vote study, which is actually better because they're actually validating to vote. 2020, 8% of African Americans

according to Pew's validated vote Republican, somewhere around 11 or 12, if you look, at the exit poll. And then, well, then let's look at 2022, right? We just had a midterm election. Right. Right. Right. Right. And we were being in this right word swing. What's happening? According to Pew validated voting. Six percent of African Americans voted voted Republican in 2022. 9 percent if you look, look at the exit polls. Let's go to the off your election that just happened in Virginia. Certainly you would see Republicans having a banner time in these off your elections because black and brown people are moving to the right, right? That's just. makes sense. It's just math, right? No, you don't see it in any of the actual election results.

Governor Yonkin was turning on the engines of his jets to go jump into the Republican primary because Republicans were going to sweep Virginia in this off-year election. And what happened? Not only, they lost seats and Democrats took back a chamber of the House in Virginia. There is no evidence of this right-work swing of African-Americans, brown people strongly in actual election results and in polls with actually large sample size of African Americans. Look, we've been doing a fairly robust sample size poll of African American for Black Pack for the last three years. And our data has been fairly consistent where Donald Trump is anywhere from 11 to 9% support where historically Republicans tend to be. Now, is that to say that Biden is getting the support levels that he needs to

to match his 2020 support? No, he's not. But does he have a story to tell? I think he does have a story to tell and it's incumbent on them to tell that story. Quina, let me ask you this, because I think that narrative, obviously, I'm in media matters, right? And I think that the story that you tell and how you tell that story and where you tell that story is critical. The question that I have, though, is whether or not the Biden campaign, if it is either an and or both and situation, where you tell the story of achievements as some of which you have rattled off, and I'll add to that, that just this week, $6 billion of student loan forgiveness for public service workers now brings the total of the Biden administration up to close to $150 billion of student loan forgiveness, one of the

cornerstones of his campaign in 2020, that he has done. And I wonder if the story, the narrative that is constructed is around, what I have done or if the story is about what Trump will do, right? Or is it an and or situation or a both and? It's not an and or situation. It is you have to tell a story. Look, you have to, especially for if you're an incumbent, right? You have to tell a story of, of what you've been done, what you've done and what

you've been fighting for, right? And so much of this isn't breaking through the news isn't breaking through to key constituencies because structurally, it's different now than it was in 2012 or 2008, where so much of this critical audience is getting so much of their information from social media. Social media is dominating information space in a way that just was out in 2012 or 2008, which makes it a lot more difficult because, as you know, that social media space is noisy, cluttered, full of misinformation, and just full of foolishness. And so what we see in Focus Groups, is, and look, you know, I was just like three weeks ago on focus groups of some sporadic voting

African-American voters in a couple of key battleground areas. And they have no idea of what Joe Biden and VP Harris have been up to. Like literally no idea. They don't think they've done anything. And so none of that information in news is breaking from a little bit is breaking through about the college loan stuff, but they're unsure of it. And I got to tell you, when we lay out a case for what it is that Biden has actually done, they are astonished and wondering why they haven't heard this. And in polling data right now, we see that those who are getting most of the information from social media, they are hearing just as much negative information about Joe Biden as they are hearing positive information about Joe Biden. So going into the campaign, that absolutely has to change.

If two months out from the election, they're being overwhelmed with negative information about Joe Biden more so than positive information about Joe Biden? Joe Biden's in trouble, right? So they have time to turn. And again, you build campaigns to do that. And they got to build a different kind of campaign than we did in 2012 because so much, again, so much of the information flow is on social media and they've got to figure out new ways to communicate and unique ways to communicate in a social media space that's different than doing a 60-second television. Given where we are right now, the numbers that you see, the conversations that you have, where do you find yourself on the hopefulness scale for 2024?

The fundamentals of a campaign are the fundamentals of a campaign. And he or she who has a better story to tell and the resources to tell that story, I always like their chances. I think Joe Biden has a really good story to tell. He does. I think back to one of the most famous ads in American political history is mourning in America where, you know, we're Reagan coming, you know, we were coming out of recession, kind of coming out of recession. Americans were not feeling good about the economy or feeling good about the direction,

necessarily the direction they were. And Reagan said, we are stronger, better, prouder. It's mourning in America. We are moving in the right direction and sold up and talked up his story of changing an economy. Joe Biden has a better story to tell and going to re-election in Ronald Reagan did. From this a number of standpoint, it is more mourning in America right now. down than it was when the Reagan campaign said it was. So I think Biden has a good story to tell. Donald Trump doesn't have a new story to tell. And the other thing really quickly in the data is what's missing in a lot of these conversations is in most of these polls that are public right now, Joe Biden is somewhere between 43 and 45 percent of the white vote in those polls, right? And where they're

saying he's lagging is where minorities. Let's be clear about something. If Joe Biden gets 45 percent of the white vote, it will be a fucking landslide because we don't get close. Right. We haven't gotten close to 40. Yeah. We've been a long time since we've gotten close to 45% of the wife. All right. Well, Cornell, we will leave it there today.

And of course, we will check in with you as we get closer and closer to the election. Always appreciate your analysis. I appreciate you. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. Andy, how are we closing?

out this glorious week in American politics with your fuck that guy. My fuck that guy today is a soulless hack, whom I have disliked for a very long time. And he's given me yet another reason to call him a soulless hack. I'm talking about Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for George W. Bush. And now Fox News contributor, you know, let me take you back to a time. when Donald Trump said that Jews who vote for Democrats actually hate their religion. This is, I'm going all the way back to Monday, I believe. Take us on the time journey.

Yeah. So this was, you know, fairly roundly condemned by most people. But of course, there's always the exceptions. And there's always the exceptions among my co-religionists like Ben Shapiro. who has been, you know, he says stupid shit like that all the time. And there's Ari Fleischer popping up on Fox News to defend what Trump said and basically said, hey, you know, the liberal Jews are the ones that don't go to synagogue. And they don't blindly support Israel, regardless of what Israel does.

And so he gets up there. He does the usual thing where he says, well, Trump put it indelicately. but he's basically right is what he said. I will not only say fuck that guy to Ari Fleischer. I will also say to him directly, go fuck yourself. Because I am just like I am so over this shit. I'm not sure what's worse. Donald Trump, who is not Jewish, policing who is and who is not a good Jew,

maybe that's worse, but it's still bad when an actual Jewish person like Ari Fleischer feels fit to do it as well. But if we're going to do this shit, hey, Ari Fleischer, I think you're a shitty fucking Jew. So how about that? I don't think you stand for anything that my religion should stand for. I don't know if I said this before, but you are a soulless hack. So fuck that guy. Bravo, Andy. I don't even know what to say to that. Bravo. Also, like, let me, let me just say, I agree wholeheartedly with the fact that any time that somebody that is not a part of any group wants to dictate and tell people how to be in that group, a.k. Donald Trump with the Jewish community, shut the fuck up.

Anybody ask you? Like if we wanted advice on how to be overweight, overly tanned with a fake wig and how to deal with that, we'll come. We'll come knocking. Until then, shut the fuck up. Nobody asked you for your advice. Yep. All right, Danielle, get us out of this hole that I put us in.

Who's your fuck that guy to close out this week? Well, I've mentioned this before on this show, which is the responsibility that people with large platforms have when they decide to delve into. politics, which is not their forte. So who am I coming for this week is the folks over at the Breakfast Club? Why am I doing that? The Breakfast Club has a huge audience, largely black and brown young Americans that pay attention. They go to them for hip-hop gossip and, you know, celebrity news and all of these things. But every once in a while, they get into serious conversations about politics. I'm all for educating the masses, but I'm all for educating them with the fucking truth.

So a couple of weeks ago, they wanted to bring on Nikki Haley. Okay, folks say, look, if you're going to bring on, you know, candidates for presidents, you have to bring on both. Okay, they bring on Nikki Haley and then they brought on VP Kamala Harris. Okay, fine. But now, now they have decided that it isn't just about bringing on candidates running from the two parties to bring their listeners both sides. Now they're delving in and bringing on one of the foremost liars, racist, anti-black voices to come on their show, none other than Candice Owens. And I just don't get it. I don't get where the value is here. You can make an argument and I know that there are rules around how you bring candidates on and if you do and you can extend an invitation

to Republicans and Democrats, blah, blah, blah, blah. But to bring on someone that is so goddamn anti-black, that is such a liar that carries the water for white supremacy, you want to talk about a handmaiden? I don't get what the value is. And your audience deserves better than to be poisoned with this type of hateful bullshit rhetoric. Because if you're going to bring somebody like this on, then I expect it to be like hardcore interviewing. Not some softball shit where you allow her conspiracy theories to run amok. So for that reason, the folks over at the breakfast club either stay the fuck out of politics

or get yourselves better educated because this ain't it. So for that reason, fuck those guys. Yeah, I mean, one of the things you mentioned is that among the other things you said that are all true, she's a liar. Lyer. Like, why do I don't understand the idea of having people on the show who you know are inveterate liars and just go through life lying. That whole thing is just really, really, really weird to me. Charlemagne and DJ Envy and Jess hilarious, you got to do better. Come on.

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