The Daily Beast Podcast - Why SCOTUS’ Delay on Trump Immunity Call May Spell Trouble

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

“The most frustrating thing to me about this is the fact that Donald Trump’s attorneys walked into the Supreme Court–I know that this sounds like the beginning of a joke, it is, but it’s not funny–and said basically that if Donald Trump as president decided that he wanted to get Team SEAL 6 to go ahead and kill his political opponent he could do that and unless he was found to be impeached by the House and by the Senate, then he’s not liable for the crimes that he commits. It shouldn’t have taken hours of deliberation to make a decision here,” Moodie said. “It’s a case that never should have been heard at all. It should have just been dismissed out of hand and they could have just simply written ‘no’ and that would’ve been the end of that. Or ‘no, this is stupid. Stop bothering us with this crap,’” Levy said. Plus! CNN commentator S.E. Cupp talks to The New Abnormal about her new show on Fox TV called Battleground and why Democrats need to stop trying to replace Joe Biden this close to the election. MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner also joins the podcast to talk about all the Trumpworld co-stars currently in jail or on trial. 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 Kedden, 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.

CNN commentator SC Cup joins us today to talk about her new show on Fox TV stations, Battleground, and why Democrats need to stop trying to replace Joe Biden this close to the election. Then we'll talk to MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirshner. We'll tell us what the status of all the Trump World co-stars currently in jail or on trial at this very moment. but first let's have some fun. So June is usually a good month, right? It is the start of summer, the summer solstice, you know, you have like all wonderful things to look forward to. But if you are a person who has the unfortunate job of paying attention to what is happening in this country,

June is a terrible fucking month because it is when the Supreme Court makes its final bullshit fucking decisions. And we know that the last two years of the Roberts Court have been some of the worst for progress, for equity, for justice, for bodily autonomy in this country. You would think, though, that there is one particular case. I mean, there are so many that they have not decided on yet. And they supposedly have until the end of June, which is when their term is over, which for those of you playing at home, is next week. We're waiting on this decision on the immunity case as well as EMTALA. and others around whether or not a person that has been convicted of domestic violence, can you know get a gun?

But the most frustrating thing to me about this is the fact that Donald Trump's attorneys walked into the Supreme Court and know that this sounds like the beginning of a joke. It is, but it's not funny, and said basically that if Donald Trump as president decided that he wanted to get Team Seal 6 to go ahead and kill his political opponent, he could do that. And unless he was found to be impeached by the House and by the Senate, then like, he's not liable for the crimes that he commits. It shouldn't have taken hours of deliberation to make a decision here. But we are looking at, I think, as of this recording, oh, well over a hundred days that this Supreme Court has been deliberating this. And Andy, for the love of God, I can't understand what hot hell we are living in and what this decision is going to do.

to what is left of our Constitution. Yeah, I think as we record this, it's 112 days, and it's possible that by time people are listening to this, that the decision will have been handed down. That doesn't change any of this, because it still shouldn't have taken 113 days. Like you said, it shouldn't have taken 113 minutes. It's a case that never should have been heard at all. It should have just been dismissed out of hand. And they could have just simply written no.

and that would have been the end of that or no, this is stupid. Stop bothering us with this crap. Instead, they agreed to hear this case back in February, and then they scheduled oral arguments for, I think, around the end of April. And there is no way around the fact that they are completely slow walking this. You mentioned that the term ends at the end of June. I don't even think that that's necessarily true. I think the term, I think historically, it sort of ended at the end of June, but the term ends when the Supreme Court says the term ends. And I think sometimes they even drop decisions in the middle of the summer, even if they're on recess, technically. So I guess the term never officially ends. They just go on recess when they feel like going on recess. By point being, there's nothing that says that this decision has to be issued by the end of June. It could go even further than that. What bothers me is for something that should have been.

been such a slam dunk nine zero decision, why are they taking so long? And that makes me nervous. And obviously, I have no facts to back this up. This is just speculation. But it makes me wonder if they're having trouble, you know, cobbling together a majority. And that makes me really nervous because it shouldn't be anywhere near that point. It shouldn't be any kind of tough decision at all. And if there are four or five or however many justices looking for an excuse to grant presidents sort of this like eternal immunity, that is terrifying. I cannot think of another reason why this hasn't been issued yet. The only thing that sort of gives me a little bit of hope is that if they had enough

justices to vote for presidential immunity, i.e., in this case, to help former President Trump, I think they would have probably wanted to get that out there fairly quickly, or they wouldn't be looking to slow walk it if that was what the conclusion was going to be. My sort of, you know, very tiny, small glimmer of hope is that ultimately they are going to rule against Trump here. I'm like, are you drunk? I might be. I might be. I'm like, because that may be the most hopeful thing I think you have ever said. I know. I know.

On this podcast, since I have been on it, and I am just like, I'm outdone. Because I thought that you and I were pessimists in it together until the end. Because I, on the other hand, do not see that glimmer. I don't know if I have sunglasses on or my eyes are closed, but I can't see anything but darkness coming from that fucking doomed den that we call the Supreme Court. I just want to say this one thing, which is that according to the New York Times opinion piece, something's rotten about the justices taking so long. on Trump's immunity case is that they said that the court is a busy place, though the justices

are completing decisions at the second slowest rate since the 1946 term, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal. There is just no explanation historically if you put in together all the process explanations that could make this make sense other than politics. And that's all that I want to say about that. Speaking of delays, Donald Trump, and there is, oh, God, I am not making light of this at all. Author Roman Satuta interviewed Donald Trump six times since he was voted out of office in 2020. And in his latest book and in an interview that he was doing with Caitlin Collins on CNN, he talks about something really disturbing, which should be disturbing to anyone,

which is that the former president has severe, memory issues. And he offered several alarming examples in his interview, one of which where he says that he was interviewing Donald Trump at Trump Towers, where at some point in the interview, Donald Trump said to Rahman, well, I need to go upstairs and deal with the Afghanistan. Upstairs where? And like, sir, you haven't had to deal with Afghanistan, nor do I think that you really dealt with it when you were president, but you haven't had that responsibility for damn near almost four years now. So that in it of itself was alarming, but there were other things, but Andy, I will let you give your thoughts. I don't want to be the, and you're surprised by this

guy, because it's important that these examples keep coming out. But at this point, all they are, there are further evidence of what we should already know. And again, this is, I'm not making light of them or saying this is no big deal, because I do think it's important that example after example keep coming out. But we have seen with our own eyes and heard with our own ears the extent to which he is just losing it or has just lost it. Other examples from the Rahman Satuta interview included Trump, as Satuta puts it confidently telling him, Joan Rivers voted for him for president. Joan Rivers died in 2014, not remembering that they had just talked a couple of weeks ago and saying, you know, something about how it's been years since

we last talked, these are not examples of someone who is mentally fit to hold the office of the presidency. Again, I don't know. I'm of two minds with this because it's hard to look at people and just think, how did you not already know this about him? But we also do know that there are a lot of people that somehow don't already know this about him. And that's why it's important that more and more of this stuff continue to come.

out is what I would say here. Yeah. And I think that, you know, the other piece is we see mainstream media focus consistently on Biden's age. Right. We see photos. We see videos. If Biden trips. Oh, my God. Look at him. He's too old to be president. If Biden stutters, which we know he has been struggling with stuttering his entire life. Oh, my God, he has no cognition. We know that when Biden was deposed by special counsel that what was left out of that bullshit report that the special counsel put out was that, oh, you have a really great memory. Those remarks were left completely out and were discovered later at a congressional hearing. But when we hear things like this consistently, when we listen to Donald Trump ramble on, not know where he begins or ends at one of his rallies, when he is, is lacking the cognition to recall things from recent memory.

And we're not elevating that to a Biden trip. You know that something ain't fucking right. You know that there are people that are way in cahoots for the clearance of Donald Trump becoming president, come hell or high water, whether or not he has the cognitive ability to do so. And those that will go above and beyond to blow up reporting on Biden

that for anyone else that is 80 would not be a big deal. There is a difference between being old and slower and having cognitive issues. And that's the thing that I want people to really understand here, is that you can be old and slow. Absolutely. Your reflexes down those types of things. But to lose focus of years and time and not have recollection of recent events and that be a pattern of behavior,

that is something that should raise alarm bells. No, absolutely. And I thought this for a while now. The thing about Joe Biden is he looks old. And Donald Trump sort of doesn't in the same way. And I think that's what people tend to focus on. And I think, and that includes a lot of the media that you're talking about here. So if Joe Biden takes a couple of seconds to figure out an answer, or if he aligns a word or something like that, because he looks,

old. I think people are like, oh, he's just old. Whereas Donald Trump can get up on a stage, you know, not always, because there are times when he looks really tired and slow, but there are times when he, you know, he's energetic. You can't say he's not. But at the same time, he's saying the most ridiculous things and getting things wrong and calling the White House Dr. Ronnie Johnson when it was Ronnie Jackson and rambling off on some story about sharks and electric boats that if Biden had done that, we would have seen stories in the New York Times about how he was unfit to be president. Trump does it. It's like it's a punchline and it's like, look at this weird old, look at this weird guy. And there's no talk of the fact that going off on

a meandering long story about sharks and electric boats is probably a pretty good sign that things ain't all in order upstairs. But I think that a lot of that boils down to optics. I think it's that Joe Biden just looks old. And by old, I mean, he looks his age. Like, he doesn't look bad for a guy his age. He just looks his age. And Donald Trump, a little bit less so, I think. And I think that's a lot of what this is keyed off of.

So basically, Joe Biden should have gotten hair plugs. Again. And Botox and a tan. Right. And then maybe Americans would not be so concerned with him tripping and more concerned with the fact that Donald Trump thinks that Joan Rivers was alive two years after she passed in order to vote for him in 2016. Yeah, and I mean, but also it's like, you know, Joe Biden walks like an old man, which he is.

Again, I'm not knocking him by saying this. He walks like, you know, a lot of people his age walk. So we're going to shuffle along to the next topic. And that being other shit that is happening around town that doesn't, you know, linger around people's age and how they look, which is, let's take a look, Andy, shall we, at what is happening in Louisiana. This state is wild to me in so many ways. Like recently, they have allowed for, I think, 18-year-olds without any training to be able to

get a gun, have an AR-15, walking around and about town. But this latest move just kind of takes the cake, which is that Louisiana is now going to to require all public classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. I'll let you take it from there. Like, I just... There's so many things wrong with this, starting with the fact that it's just blatantly unconstitutional, which doesn't mean that the Supreme Court, which will inevitably hear this case, will rule that way, but it is blatantly unconstitutional and has been deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the past in a case that involved Kentucky, trying to do the same exact thing back in the, I want

to say the 70s. And again, we should point out, this is not even simply saying that you can post the Ten Commandments on the wall of a public school classroom, which would still be unconstitutional. This is mandating that every public school in Louisiana, up to and including public universities, post the Ten Commandments, I believe in every classroom in those schools. It doesn't really get more blatantly unconstitutional than this. And this is maybe, besides, the point, but it's worth pointing out. Fred Clark wrote a piece on this at patios.com. And then Kevin Cruz, historian at Princeton and friend of the pod, followed up on it. The version of the Ten Commandments they're using is not from the Bible, which makes sense because every Bible has different

versions of the Ten Commandments. Wording is different. There's Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not murder, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There's no like sort of one agreed upon standard for the Ten Commandments. But there is a version that came to prominence when the movie The Ten Commandments came out because Cecil B. DeMille, the director, worked with an organization called the Feternal Order of Eagles, and they came up with this version of the Ten Commandments in 1950. Cecil B. DeMille and this Fraternal Order of Eagles did a huge promotional campaign for the movie The Ten Commandments using this version of the Ten Commandments. This is the version of the Ten Commandments that Louisiana is saying has to be posted in all the

classrooms. So it's a movie promotion version of the Ten Commandments, which to me just perfectly encapsulates the religiosity of the people behind shit like this. Yeah, that it is just 100% a farce and like the Hollywood imagery. And this is what Governor Landry said on Saturday at a Republican fundraiser. He said, I can't wait to be sued. Quote, if you want to respect the rule of law, you've got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses. Yeah. They're calling him the OG lawgiver. That's what everyone's calling Moses.

And the fact, Andy, that you just gave us the history lesson that they don't read, that they don't fucking know. Because like once again, this is all about owning the lips. This isn't even really about educating young people. That's the point. When you sign a law like this and then you say, in response, I can't wait to be sued, is like the pick me of pickmies. Like you just want your name in the fucking headlines. You want to be the next tough guy, the next bullshit wearing, lift, shoe having dissantis of Louisiana. You don't give a fuck about those kids. And like whether or not they know

the rule of law, whether or not like they treat each other well. Like you just have the authority to do some outlandish maga bullshit and so you're going to do it. And know like you said, that it's going to go to the Supreme Court where, you know, the flag-loving fucking Alito, I'm sure will be like, you know what? I'll do you one better. Let's mandate that they go on flags. And we end goes outside of every fucking classroom. Ugh.

Essie Cup is a CNN commentator, New York Daily News columnist, and now the host of a new political show called Battleground that airs on Fox TV stations. She's also a decrepit friend of mine. Sorry, that should be an old friend of mine. AI, man. Just killing me. Anyway, she joins me now. Walker, Messy, and my apologies for that AI mistake.

It's so not cool. I know. I agree. I'm a scourge. I'm a woman of advancing age. You can't talk to me like that. You are way younger than me, so. Well, that's true.

There's that. But then again, so is everybody. Yeah. All right, so tell me about Battleground. First of all, how did it come about? And why did I have to find out about it in variety? without you running it by me first, as I thought we had agreed you would always do.

It came about quickly. We had a pact. We had a pact. You shook my hand in that coffee shop. That's right. You were ned. It came about very quickly. I obviously, I've been at CNN for 11 years.

I just resigned. Wow. And my agent called with this opportunity to do a very unique show, narrowly focused on the seven battleground states that are going to decide this election. And that's all we're doing. We're not covering national stories. We're not covering trials. We're not covering national polls. There's lots of places to go for all of that, including CNN. We are only talking to voters in these seven swing states about what matters to them. So we're relying on Fox local reporters in all of these states to go out into the field and interview voters and tell us what's on their mind. So if you're

interested in an election year show that is really hyper-focused and kind of cutting out all of the noise and the punditry and speculation. It's a really cool way to cover the election, and I'm just, I'm psyched to be doing it. I don't know how I got lucky enough to be selected for this, but I'm thrilled to do it. I would assume your body of work has something to do with it. I don't know. So as you said, it focuses on the seven battleground states, because I'm smart, I'm assuming that's where the name of the show came from. I'm curious, though, can you even name all seven states? And can you do it in reverse alphabetical order? I can try. Okay. We've got Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia. You've already screwed up reverse alphabetical order. Oh, I can't do that. Oh, okay. All right, then go ahead. Wisconsin,

North Carolina, Georgia. Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada. Yeah, seven for seven. I'm impressed. So there's no misunderstanding. This show is not on Fox News Channel. It is not. There is a big wall between Fox News, the cable product, and then Fox Television, which is your local Fox channel. And in fact, because this show is syndicated, anyone can buy it. So NBC could air it. We're being aired on the CW in North Carolina. Non-Swing states have picked up the show. So we're airing in every major market, New York City, L.A., Texas. So, yeah, it's got nothing to do with Fox News at all. Yeah, but I just, I didn't want people to either be a turned off when they heard Fox or B, to think the show sounded interesting, but then mistakenly try to find it on Fox News.

No, I've gotten a lot of that kind of confusion. How could you go over there? Or thank God you finally come around, you know, to nag or whatever. But obviously, CNN would never let me do a show on Fox News at the same time as CNN. So it's not a compete. It's local syndication and something completely different from what I do. on CNN. And right now it's a weekly show that airs on Mondays, but that all changes in August, right? Yeah, August 12th, we go daily as we sort of like hyperdrive toward the election. And we imagine we'll go past the election because I can't imagine it will be settled on election day or election night. So yeah, we're sort of doing a slow ramp up to get to get everyone acclimated to what we're doing and then hyperdrive from August to the election. So I watched the premiere, You know, it's a very, I kept thinking throughout, this is a very zippy show in a good way. It bounces back and forth to reporters in all seven of those states.

You talk about, I think, in the intro of the show, that you're very much going to be covering the horse race and looking at the polls a lot. Is that the intention throughout the whole, you know, run of the show? Yeah, it's who's up and who's down, but why. And that depends on where you are. And not just among the states, but inside the states, voters in Flint, Michigan, have very different concern. than voters in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, right? And that's true of all the states. So we're covering the horse race, but it's very hyper-localized.

We're aware of the national polls, but we're really trying to focus on where these guys, and we include RFK Jr, too, are in these states among certain voters. So we're in the next episode, we're going to Michigan. We're talking to Democrats who are really mad at Joe Biden about Gaza. And is that real? Is that, you know, we hear about that in the news a lot,

but is that a real constituency that could impact this race? Or is it smaller than we're estimating? We're going to Nevada and Arizona to talk to voters about home prices, soaring home prices and what that has meant both positively for voters and maybe negatively for voters. So it's issues oriented, not personality oriented, and it's really focused on the voters, which I just think is cool. A cable network can't do that as well because, you know, they're so focused on national news. And I get that.

But this is so specific and unique, we have so many reporters in these places who've covered these places for years that it's, again, just a really cool way to cover this selection. Yeah, absolutely. And like you said, it's tapping into a, you know, a great resource, which is these reporters from the localities, from the states and the localities that we're talking about here. And that was very evident in the premiere where you had reporters from all seven of the states from local Fox affiliates who really can give you insight. into what exactly is going down there in a way that, like you said, cable news just doesn't have the time or really the interest, in my opinion, to focus on. Yeah, listen, there are a lot of people go to cable news to hear the arguments and the debates and the conversation and I get that. I do that on a day-to-day basis.

But this is different. And it's an experiment. I'm excited to see if it works. And if it tells an election story that is somehow more accurate or more revealing than we've seen before and if voters really like tuning in this way, we'll see. But I'm really enjoying the journalism of it and the attention to local politics. That's really cool for me. Next week is the first presidential debate. And so I'm curious, how will you cover that, or will you cover that on Battleground, you know, which I assume will air like the Monday,

the episode that will air the Monday after that, will you be able to get sort of insight on how voters in these seven states reacted to the debate? Is that the kind of thing you're going to be looking to do? That's exactly what we're going to do. So we have plans for the debate and we're having our local reporters in the swing states go out and talk to voters after the debate to get their thoughts. And look, those are anecdotes, right? Those are not scientific polls. But those are anecdotes talking to real voters about how they ingested that performance because, you know, these debates are theater now. And the way that cable will cover that will be very. very different. And so, you know, you don't have to choose. You can tune into both, but this will be, yes, going, going to these states where the election will be decided by these states in the margins and talking to the voters and their reaction to the debate, what they saw.

It's such a great idea. And, you know, like most ideas, like now it's out there. And, and I'm sort of thinking like, you know, why did no one else come up with this before that? I had the same thought. Like, this is so genius and not complicated. This is a very simple idea. Yeah. I couldn't believe no one had done it. I'm sure some will start trying now, right? Because it is, I think it is a good idea. And it is a good way of covering an election that I think has just been kind of missing. No, absolutely. And considering how much we focus on, you know, the fact that this election, as most elections are these days, will be determined by voters and possibly a very small number of voters in the seven states. It's like, yeah, well, of course someone should be covering this. Right. Yeah, exactly. I want to sort of move on and I want to talk about a column that you wrote on Wednesday that I saw on the New York Daily News in which you basically tore apart all the stories. We're somehow still seeing about the Democrats replacing Joe Biden on the ticket. You called all of this a fever dream, which I think is 100% correct. I'm driven crazy every time I see one of these pieces.

It is five months from the election. Nobody's replacing nobody, S.E. No, I mean, it's less than two months until the DNC that will nominate him. I think I said this in the piece. Like the stages of grief, like, I get to acceptance already. It's acceptance time. And the time for tooling around with this was like two years ago or a year ago before Joe Biden announced he's running for president.

The incumbent president is not going to drop out five months before the election. And I'm not just seeing this idea linger. It's like ramping up. It's driving me crazy because it's delusional. It's indulgent. it's very self-indulgent. Like I saw a column from Kathleen Parker at the Washington Post, who was very Kathleen Parker in offering,

well, why doesn't Hillary replace Kamala on the ticket? As if A, that solves any problems. It doesn't. B, the idea, the notion of a white woman suggesting another white woman replaced the woman of color on the ticket is like so crazy to me. What century are you in? And it was so like the character. of it all. Like, can I speak to your manager? I'd like to make a fit on this ticket that will make no sense and is never happening.

Like, this isn't what we're supposed to do. Even as like opinion writers, we're not supposed to just like write fan fiction. We're supposed to stay based in reality here. And this is so outside of reality to me. You can never say never, I guess, but I'll be shocked if they end up replacing him. And that will be the end of it. It'll be over for him because no one will trust Democrats. if they pull a bait and switch. Yeah, that's the thing. It's beyond everything else at this point, like it would have been one thing if a year ago, like you said, or two years ago, Joe Biden had announced that he was not going to seek re-election. I think that would have been fine. And the Democrats could have figured out, you know, whether it was going to be Harris or

Newsom or whatever. But five months out or three months out, if you do this somehow at the DNC, you are telling people, don't vote for this party. Yes, don't vote for our. ideas, don't vote for our policies, don't vote for our candidates because we don't know what we're doing and we don't have confidence. And so why would you have confidence in us? It would be such a disastrous decision at this point. Now, I want to make clear, though, I don't think Joe Biden should have been the nominee for the Democratic Party. I will vote for Joe Biden, but I think they should have selected someone else. I said this almost immediately after he was elected, that he was elected as a transitional president, not a transformational one. We should not be relying. We should not be relying.

on an old man like Joe Biden to transform the country or even the Democratic Party. That should be left to someone from the next generation who understands the next generation's concerns. But nobody listened to me, as usual, Andy. And here we are. You're welcome. A, I agree with you. And B, as you obviously know, that is such a wholly different question from replacing him this close to the election. I mean, that really is like that is a column you write. And I have, yeah. And look, and we talked about this on the podcast back then as well. And look, a lot of Democrats certainly, I think, don't disagree with you in saying that. But it's just so different from, like you said, this fanfic being written now. I think you mentioned the

Kathleen Parker piece. And the other one that was the other insane idea that I saw floated was Greta Van Suster and saying, I think on news. Max. She said, I'm the only one who thinks this, and I have been saying this for two years. But my wild guess is that Hillary Clinton will be top of the Dem ticket. She's saying this now. She is saying this now. I know. That's insane on many levels, too. Hillary Clinton, I'll remind you, lost twice, both to a Democrat and a Republican, one of the most divisive figures in American politics, deeply, deeply unpopular nationally, and is like slightly younger.

than Joe Biden. What does that accomplish? Nothing. So if you're going to invent this fantasy, at least do it intelligently, but they're not. My initial thought is that I think we need term limits for political pundits. Yes. Yes. No, but do you think, Andy, because I was thinking, like, why is this catching on? Like, is there a psychological point to this that I'm not getting? Because it's not making sense. All you're doing is projecting a lack of confidence in the candidate, I assume you want, Right? Like, I assume Kathleen Parker, you know, is going to vote Democratic. A lot of these folks are on the left. There's some on the right, too. But is there a reason to doing it other than this sort of self-indulgent fantasy, do you think? No, I really don't. And look, Greta Van Sustern, I think, probably is not voting for Biden. No, she's probably voting for Tom Cruise or some other side.

Yeah, exactly, or maybe OJ. I don't know. Kathleen Parker, you know, is a, I guess, sort of an old school Republican. Oh, please. Is she not? I guess, but come on. There's no way this woman is voting for Donald Trump. Oh, I agree with that. I'm just saying that her bona fides are she's not a liberal Democrat or anything like that.

And what I was going to say is, I guess you could make the case for this really being fan fiction for her. But even so, what does Kathleen Parker see in Hillary Clinton that makes her think that voters across America are suddenly going to say, oh, that's a ticket I really want. There's no logical reason behind it. There isn't. It's insane. And beyond the reasons we said that like this late in the game, it would be a disaster, none of these other people that they're talking about could win.

Like Hillary Clinton cannot win again. She knows that. Yeah. I don't, I just don't understand it. Now, if you want to talk about Oprah, that's a different story. But it's still too late. You'd have had to have Oprah run like a year ago. Yeah.

No, for sure. And that's the thing. I mean, Hillary Clinton, if Biden had not run and, you know, had decided not to run and Hillary Clinton decided to run, I honestly don't think she would have been the nominee. No, I don't even think she would have been the nominee. You're correct. I think people are over her. Yeah.

And they're over Biden too, but he's in there, right? So that's what we're going with. But they're over this, like, old guard of Democrats. And it's not like there aren't. really interesting people coming up behind them to grow and develop. You have to develop this bench so that voters get used to seeing these other people and not just think this is a dynasty that you're just going to keep passing the torch to the next in line. I think it's crazy.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. It just boggles my mind. Every time I see one of these pieces still being written or talked about on TV now, I'm like, you need to find another job because this one has passed. asked you by. I'm pretty much out of time, but I do want to ask you just quickly. Any predictions for next week's presidential debate? I hate to say it. I think Biden's going to get crushed. Interesting. And not in actuality, because Trump will lie and Trump will be nasty and gross. So he won't win morally, right? But he will win in effectiveness for his base. He will win and

Biden will lose, even though Biden will probably tell the truth more than Donald Trump, if he can remember it and Biden probably won't go low the way Trump will go low and personal and gross. But I just think Trump is going to look so much more energetic than Joe Biden. I think it's a really, really bad idea for Joe Biden to do it. But what do you think? I'm sort of on the opposite side of this. I actually think Joe Biden is going to be surprisingly good. I think the bar is very low for him. And I think every time he's sort of at the state of the union or whatever he clears that bar handily. I sort of think that this will be the same. We will see. Oh, I hope you're right. I know. I know you do. Essie, thanks so much for joining us.

New show Battleground on Fox TV networks, Monday nights. Is there a set time or does it differ? No, you got to check your local listings. Okay. You know, they all air it at different times. Gotcha. But check it out. It's a really fun show and an absolutely great idea. Essie, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Folks, I am so happy to welcome back to the new abnormal Glenn Kershner, who is the host of Justice Matters and an MSNBC legal analyst and my go-to person on all legal news surrounding Trump and his criminal bandits that he surrounds himself with. Glenn, in, I guess a few weeks, Steve Bannon, one of Trump's confidants and masterminds behind the Build the Wall scheme, is going to be. to be reporting to federal prison. And why is that? Because of his contempt of Congress' charge. But as reports were coming out about the fact that he's going to be headed to prison for a few months,

I couldn't help but think about the fact that he should have been in prison for the last couple of years, if not for being pardoned by Donald Trump. So I want to start out with your thoughts on Bannon headed in for four months, meaning that he's going to get. get out in time for the election. And then let's just run down the list of people who have been indicted, charged, or part of a RICO case, all of the very fine people that Donald Trump surrounds himself with. Yeah. So Steve Bannon will not only get out apparently after doing his four-month bit in time for the election,

but he'll probably also get out in time for his next criminal trial in New York. Because as you say, Danielle, he had been indicted. federally for doing what for basically defrauding Donald Trump's supporters out of their money by claiming he'd use the money as part of his We Build the Wall Foundation, but instead it looks like it was Steve Bannon building his own bank account. So the feds indicted him. And of course, his criminal associate Donald Trump pardoned him. But the good news is, you know, Daniel, the states continue to clean up the fed's dirty work, right? The feds messes. We've talked over and over again about how Donald Trump and his criminal associates when they tried to steal the 2020

election, that represents a federal problem. It requires a federal solution. And that looks like federal indictments. And yet, it is the states doing the heavy lifting of justice. So after Steve Bannon was pardoned for defrauding Donald Trump supporters, the state of New York authority said, yeah, not so fast sport. They indicted him. And Steve Bannon is pending Trump. and will very likely be convicted because his co-conspirators in that case have either been convicted or pleaded guilty and I think some agreed to cooperate. So he will serve this four months, but that may end up being the least of his worries and the shortest of his criminal sentences. So with a little luck, he'll be headed back to prison before too long. But as you say, I mean,

who in Donald Trump's orbit hasn't been indicted isn't pending trial, you know, two of his corrupt former lawyers just made yet another appearance in court after being indicted on nine felony charges, specifically Boris Epstein and Jenna Ellis, who's a frequent flyer as a criminal defendant these days, they popped in the court a couple of days ago out in Arizona and pleaded not guilty to, as I say, nine felony counts for being part of Donald Trump's efforts to steal the 2020 election, more specifically for being part of the fake elector scheme. in Arizona. And Daniel, a lot of people have asked in the last day or so, well, if Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty in the RICO prosecution down in Georgia and agreed to cooperate against Donald Trump

and all of the remaining co-conspirators, why did she plead not guilty in Arizona? And the answer is, recall her very first court appearance in Georgia. She pleaded not guilty because that's what one does at your first court hearing. It's called the arraignment. And that is the first time, you're actually put on notice of the charges that the grand jury has indicted you on. So you can't possibly go in and plead guilty on day one. You could, but then you'd be sent for mental health screening. So my money is riding on Jenna Ellis, sort of becoming what I call a global cooperator pleading guilty out in Arizona and cooperating with the Arizona authorities just as she is cooperating with District Attorney Fannie Willis.

Glenn, Donald Trump famously said that he only surrounds himself with the best people. And what we've learned over the last eight or nine years is that Donald Trump surrounds himself with compliant people, people that are willing to give up their morals, give up their freedom in order to pursue whatever criminal act that Donald Trump has up his sleeve. And recently, I've seen a number of infographics that point to all of the people surrounding Donald Trump from former chiefs of staff to senior advisors to personal attorneys that are all facing criminal. charges. They can't all be witch hunts. They can't all be witch hunts and we can't all be in cahoots because as you said, the states are very much cleaning up the fed's job or doing the job that the feds decided not to do.

We're in this mess right now with cases being held on hold because Merritt Garland decided not to pursue charges against Donald Trump as soon as he left office when Robert Mueller had left documents on his desk, saying here are the 10 ways in which Donald Trump has obstructed justice. So when you look at this list of people from Mark Meadows to Giuliani to Alan Weisselberg and others, what do you think like it should jog for us as people who are, you know, they say Americans, our attention span is like that of a net. We won't pay attention to the election until maybe a month prior to the election. But what does it say about you that all of Donald Trump's.

top people and advisors have either been indicted or heading to prison or heading to court. It says that Donald Trump, in a very real sense, is essentially a mob boss. And he surrounds himself with people who are willing to do some criminal bidding with him for him. And they get burned. Every single one of them end up getting burned. And as you say, you know, these these prosecutions can't all be witch hunts, right? Like Donald Trump is always screaming. And when he is assisted in the witch hunt propaganda that he spews into the public square by folks like Jim Jordan and Maga, Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, with their asinine claims of the Department of Justice being weaponized against Republicans, let's do a quick reality check. At this moment, we just, the Department

of Justice just convicted Hunter Biden, a Democrat, the son of a sitting president who's a Democrat. The Department of Justice is mid-prosecution against a senator who's a Democrat, Bob Menendez. The Department of Justice just criminally indicted a congressman who's a Democrat, Henry Quayar. Listen, if we're in the process, if the Department of Justice is in the process of weaponizing against Republicans, they are doing one lousy job because they're prosecuting Democrat after Democrat after Democrat, which directly puts the lie for what Jim Jordan and Maga Mike Johnson and Donald Trump say on an endless loop. And our challenge, Daniel, is to penetrate the bubbles that are still inclined to listen to those kind of lies and buy into them. We try so very hard.

I think that you do. I think that many writers, activists, you know, legal minds try and debunk all of the lies that come out. But it's like a fire hose. It doesn't matter. Jim Jordan is going to say what he's going to say. Mag and Mike is going to say what he's going to say. And they're all going to fall in line with Donald Trump wearing his same cheap suit and tie to show, you know, because that's the best way to show you're not in a cult is to dress like you are in one. Is our time, Glenn, better spent by law. Largely, instead of spending so much energy debunking their lives, just laying out the truth. If everyone around me is on their way to jail, being indicted, or serving time, I'm pretty sure that, like, I need new friends. Do you know what I'm saying? And it's not just one person. It's a cadre. I mean, it's so many people. And so do you think that we do ourselves a better service in saying we want people?

presidents who have the best thinkers with the brightest minds around them. This is who Donald Trump has around him. And apparently, yeah, so many of Donald Trump's supporters are either unable or unwilling to absorb that reality that you just articulated. You know, when you talk about how they all dressed up in their Donald Trump costumes and went to the New York court, I mean, the one thing that struck me about that is literally 50 years ago, almost to the day, when a president was exposed as an abject criminal, the Republican leadership in Congress marched on the White House and told Richard Nixon,

you're done. Resign or we, your own party, will impeach you. And look at the difference 50 years makes, because 50 years later, the leadership, some of them of Congress, put on Donald Trump costumes and marched on a New York courtroom to stand shoulder to shoulder with an abject criminal former president of their own party. And instead of saying, we are leaving you and we are looking for new Republican leadership that the people can have some faith in with respect to allegiance to the rule of law. No, they did the exact opposite. They're standing by now a convicted felon who's still pending three months. more criminal trials. And it makes clear to me, Danielle, that virtually the entire Republican party, with two exceptions, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger and a smattering of former members of

Congress, virtually the entire Republican Party has decided that their own power and their own job security and reelection prospects are far more important than the health and viability of our democracy. That is the decision they have made. I mean, the only thing I was surprised about when Maga Mike and the rest of them put on their Donald Trump costumes and marched on that New York courthouse to support Donald Trump was that they weren't, you know, carrying a whole bunch of cups of Kool-Aid that they were just ready to, ready to down if their dear leader or their cult leader told them to, you just go ahead and take a long drink of that Kool-Aid I gave you. You and I have been talking about these cases for so long, right? These remaining cases. And my least favorite judge,

and I know she's your least favorite judge as well, Aileen Cannon, indefinitely put the documents case on hold and is now looking into trying to remove Jack Smith from the case. She's putting Jack Smith on trial tomorrow. Right. When you look at what is left and you understand that the calendar is not working in America's favor or Constitution's favor, but it's certainly working in the favor of Donald Trump and largely because of our weaponized Supreme Court, right? Do you think we will ever see these trials unfold? I do. Tell me why. Because I don't think Donald Trump will be reelected. I don't. Listen, I'm not complacent. I'm not going to sit down and shut up and not, you know, work my butt off between now and November as are you. But I do not believe Donald Trump

has attracted a single new voter to his cause. But I absolutely believe both Republicans and perhaps more importantly, independents have peeled away one after another, after another. 34 felony convictions doesn't help. Revoking women's constitutional privacy rights really didn't help and look at, you know, the waves that have risen up as a result of that ever since the Dobbs opinion, you know, killed Roe v. Wade. And I think it's all. going to come to a voting head come November. And I think, you know, if Joe Biden won by seven million votes last time, he's going to win by 14 million votes this time, notwithstanding the Republicans' efforts to suppress the vote, marginalize the vote, cheat in the upcoming

election, no, I do not believe Donald Trump will be reelected. If he is, then all of the prosecutions will go away, in my opinion, both federal and state. He won't have the law. lawful ability to do away with the state prosecutions. But when has lawful ever been part of this lexicon? Right. I fully believe this is going to sound like the stuff of, you know, Hollywood action movies. I fully believe he will deploy the military to prevent from being prosecuted in state court forums. I just do. I don't think anything, I don't think you can put anything past Donald Trump in the event he retakes the reins of government. mental power, which, again, I don't think he will.

So you brought up the 34 felony counts, which I've talked about ad nauseum. And I realized that for us, that actually means something. Then I saw a article in the New York Times where just recently, Joe Biden, the Biden campaign, ran an ad calling out the fact that you have a choice to make in this election between me or a criminal. And the New York Times says, ooh, should Biden have gone there? Like, do these felony counts even matter? Glenn, tell me a time when felonies didn't matter. Yeah, felonies always matter.

Unfortunately, you know, mainstream media, and I never do know because I am a cable news legal analyst. I never know if I lump myself in with mainstream media or not because I'm not a reporter, right? I try to analyze legal issues of the day. But to me, and I was a journalism major undergrad, I love the study of journalism. It feels to me like mainstream media still feels compelled to follow that same old model of getting both sides of the story. But the problem is there are no two sides to treason. And I feel like mainstream media has this identity crisis now because they feel it's kind of like Merrick Garland declining to prosecute Republicans in the misguided

you know, determination to appear nonpartisan. No, that actually makes you partisan. And I think mainstream media and journalists, very good journalists, suffer from an identity crisis. It's like, well, look, if we don't do the both sides thing the way we always have, then we're going to be accused of being partisan and not fair objective journalists. But the problem is there are no two sides to treason and what the Republican Party advocates for and lies to the American people about in their determination to retain power is, you know, that there are two sides to treason, but but there aren't. So I think that is something, you know, I think there's a lot of autopsies that will need to be conducted when this, you know, dark chapter of American history is in our rearview mirror.

I think the media will have to examine how it approached the sort of dictatorship that is barreling down on us and the way they chose to cover the election. And I think the Department of Justice, will have to take a long, hard look at why they were unwilling or unable to timely prosecute, you know, ruling class criminals, including members of Congress who asked for pardons for the crimes they knew they committed on and around January 6th. And the Supreme Court has said a pardon carries with it an imputation of guilt and accepting a pardon is some confession of guilt. For gosh sakes, we got the confessions.

How about we prosecute these moaps for the crimes they believe they committed by asking for a pardon? Why the Department of Justice has sat on its punches and done nothing about that, at least nothing that is public facing that would deter the Republicans from doing it all over again, as they are. We're going to have to do an autopsy on our institutions to see why it is. We have failed. We'll have to leave it there today, Glenn, but I think that that is absolutely right because the lack of prosecution on members of Congress that we know, know that they broke the law, because I've never asked for a pardon. You've never asked for a pardon. I don't know anybody that's ever asked for a pardon, preemptively. And so it is amazing to me that the Department of Justice has so much information at their fingertips and has just decided to do absolutely. nothing with it. So we will see whether or not the American people do something with the information

that they have received over the last nine years of living under Trumpism. As always, my friend Glenn Kirchner, appreciate you so very much. Great being with you, Danielle. Andy Levy. D.D.M. I don't even know what the middle D is for. I have no idea because I'm like, those aren't my initials. I know. DeSantis. Danielle DeMoodie. I hate you guys. I know what my fuck that guy is. Deserved.

How are you, Andy, ending this good, good week with your fuck that guy. I assume you met your fuck that guy as Jesse. I know that's what you assumed. I'm going to end with a story that is so wild and so bizarre. just made me laugh that I just, I have to share it. So there are these two, uh, legislators in Vermont state legislators, a Republican named Mary Morrissey and a Democrat named Jim Carroll. Morrissey, the Republican, just had to publicly apologize because she's been pouring water into Jim Carroll's backpack for the last several months.

So apparently, you know, Jim Carroll has been going to work every day and he's got this backpack, this bag that he brings to work and he sets it down or whatever. And he kept noticing, you know, I guess throughout the day or when he got home, that there was water in his bag. And he's like, what the hell is going on here? Is someone pouring water into my bag? And he says he kind of suspected Mary Morrissey because she's been very rude to him. and sort of belittled him on the house floor, I think.

But he didn't have any evidence. So apparently, over a period of weeks, he secretly recorded footage of his backpack. And on this footage, you see her pouring cups of water into it multiple times. And this has been going on since January. So this is like six months of her just dumping water into this dude's backpack. So eventually he made the footage public and she had an issue of an apology and she said, I am truly ashamed of my actions. I guess she initially, she originally tried to say that she flicked some water on the bag because she saw a bug on it.

But then she got caught on the video. And according to Carol, she told him she truly has no idea why she decided to dump water in his bag for, six months or so. Mm-mm. And he said, as quoted by the guardian, he said, at the end of the meeting with her, he said, I looked at her and I said, you know, this is really fucked me up. There were weeks when I didn't know who was doing this or why. And that's when I guess she said she really doesn't know why she did it.

And he then was asked if he forgives her. And he said, I guess I would have to say yes in the spirit of forgiveness. But if I had to be a smart ass, I'd say her apology. holds about as much water as my canvas bag. Oh shit. So, anyway, not the biggest thing in the world and there are a lot worse things going on in the world, but this was just so bizarre that I just had to make Mary Morrissey my fuck that guy for today.

That may be the stupidest fucking story I have ever heard. It's just so weird. Like, this is happening in Congress, not in like a prank that is happening. that is happening in that elementary school. My God, the fuckery. And like, did he use a ring cam? Like, how did he video? I'm not sure.

Was it waterproof? Was it like? I don't know if he put the camera on the bag or just set it up like... It was a cross from the bag. I watched the footage. Oh, dear God. That's just amazing.

Unbelievable. We're in such a dumb place. We are. All right, Danielle. So end the week on what I'm sure will be an equally lighthearted, fuck that guy. No, but it's equally fucking stupid.

So apparently we're just on a book banning frenzy, you know, and this time, let's move to our other place, our other state that we talk about on a regular basis, Texas, Cyprus, Texas, to be clear. Earlier this week, the SciFair, which is SciFair Independent School District, has voted to give themselves. So the board voted to give them. themselves the power to ban books from the district library. Obviously, this is not news. We've known that the book banning, which started in Florida, had spread like a cancer across the country.

But now, they're banning biology books. They're banning science books that they deem, that the trustees deemed to be, quote, controversial. So I guess like the only science that kids can learn in Texas, evidently in this school district is that God created Adam and Eve and that's where we end things. It is really absolutely wild, but an activist who is trying to fight against it said this. Leslie Gilmart, who's president of the nonpartisan nonprofit Cyprus families for public schools, said she believes that censoring science books make it difficult for students to engage in critical thinking. Quote, there's no both sides to scientific data. The data is the data.

Analysis and evaluation can enter the picture in science class when students are given the opportunity to consider whether or not rising temperatures and sea levels are a problem that should be addressed. Why don't six of the CFISD board trust educators to facilitate this exploration? This is an ongoing thing. That controversy that they are saying that they are going to ban things that are controversial is science. are blatant facts. The Earth is getting warmer. That is not a controversy. That is actually a crisis that young people need to learn about because maybe one of them

is going to be the person or a team of them to figure out what we can do to save this goddamn planet that they are so willingly able to gamble away. This shit has spread so far and so wide. And it is about the intensifying, dumbing down of our education. system of the invasion of religious zealots into our public schools that we thought that we fought against back in the 60s and 70s and they are back and have friends on the bench. We're just in a terrible place. So if you're not taking essentially your child's education into your own hands, you're leaving it up to the state of Texas to decide what your child should learn. And that

should be terrifying to everyone, given what these people have in mind. So for that reason, this like bullshit board of trustees in Cyprus, Texas is my, fuck that guy. This is just unbelievable. They want to remove 13 chapters from 25 textbooks. So they don't even want to remove the whole books. They want to literally cut out chapters with things in them that they don't like. One of them is in a biology book teaching about vaccines. And one of the board members intimated that vaccines cause autism, which I can't emphasize this enough. It's simply not true. Yep. It's not a matter that is up for debate. There is no debate about this. There are people who claim it, but people claiming something doesn't make something a debate. And this guy wants to remove chapters about vaccines

from a biology textbook because he believes something that isn't true. And you mentioned the global warming stuff. It's absolutely heinous. It can't be underestimated how, or it can't be overstated how devastating shit like this will be for kids and for our society as a whole. Mm-hmm. So yeah, fuck these guys. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal.

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