The Dispatch Podcast - Trump's Guilty. Now What? | Roundtable

Episode Date: May 31, 2024

A jury found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 counts in his New York criminal trial. Sarah is joined by Jonah, Mike, and Steve to break down the conviction and discuss where we all go from here. The Agenda: —Was this a Stalin show trial? —When law enforcement becomes personal —Trump’s defense failure —Shame on everybody —Did this change anyone's vote? —Trump raises $34.8 million —Will Trump receive prison time? —People you disagree with aren’t evil —Was this worth our time? Show Notes: —The Collision: What's next? —Last night's live Advisory Opinions —Rep. Susan Collins’ reaction to the conviction —NYT’s profile on Alvin Bragg —Advisory Opinions on the New York indictment —Elie Honig: Prosecutors Got Trump — But They Contorted the Law —Larry Hogan’s statement on the conviction —538 emergency pod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isger, and it's Jonah Goldberg, Steve Hayes, and Mike Warren joining us to talk. Yeah, well, we're going to talk about it. All right, so just to refresh everyone's memory, or perhaps if you're hearing this for the first time, Donald Trump just wrapped up a trial in New York State, where he was found guilty on 34 counts for falsifying business records in the first degree. That's an E-Class felony in New York. This was related to the payments that the Trump organization made to Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen had paid Stormy Daniels for her story that she had had sex with Donald Trump. In doing so, the New York law says that when the Trump organization put legal services into their books, that that was a false entry, that they were not paying Michael Cohen for legal services and that Michael Cohen was not acting as an attorney for the Trump organization. Second, that Donald Trump directed that false entry or caused it to be made.

And third, that he did so for the purpose of concealing the commission of another crime. so again the jury found I'm guilty on all of those counts and Mike I'll start with you because there have been complaints from the right about this how much do you feel as a non-lawyer that you know from the range right this was a great case good day for the rule of law no one's above the law all the way down to this is a Stalinesque show me the man I'll show you the crime problem by the way Sarah Thanks for noting that I'm a non-lawyer. So if my parents are listening, they can continue to be disappointed in me. Not a doctor either.

That's right. Exactly. Just a grubby journalist. So, yeah, look, I think that from the layman's perspective, having read a lot before, during, and even, yes, after the trial about the merits of this case, it's pretty clear that we're what what we all said from the beginning last year, a little over a year ago when this was the first indictment that came down, that this is sort of the weakest case facing Donald Trump, criminal case facing Donald Trump. There's a lot of merit to the argument that this has been a twisting of New York law or a certainly a novel interpretation and prosecution

of the admittedly broad and vague New York law governing this. It was the sort of thing that you might expect a defense to put a lot of holes in the prosecution's case throughout the trial. And honestly, my first reaction to all of this is this is this is what you get when you don't put up a defense, a pretty weak case can get a guilty verdict when the defense really doesn't put forth what I think would have been the best case for Donald Trump on this, which is to say that, again, this is a novel interpretation that there is no clear crime that was being covered up, that this was vindictive on the part of a democratically

elected district attorney in Manhattan, and to do what they should have done, which was stipulate all of the salacious stuff. Yes, Donald Trump did have a sexual relationship or sexual encounter with Stormy Daniels. Yes, he did pay Michael Cohen to pay her off. But that's not a crime. That wasn't a clear narrative from the Trump defense. And so while we can blame the prosecution all day long, as you've often said, Sarah, the jury has to decide on facts and they have to weigh these arguments about what are the relevant facts and what's true and what's not true. And so here we are. We have a guilty verdict. Trump is guilty. In my view, it's sort of the end of story setting aside the weakness of the original

case. Joan and Steve, I kind of want to ask you all the same question, which is versions of what I'm hearing from the, let's call it the intellectual principle even, right? So I want to read you what Susan Collins' reaction was. Susan Collins hardly a MAGA conservative. In fact, a lot of people wouldn't call her a conservative. She's sort of the ultimate swing vote in the Senate. She wrote, It is fundamental to our American system of justice that the government prosecutes cases because of alleged criminal conduct, regardless of who the defendant happens to be. In this case, the opposite happened. The district attorney who campaigned on a promise to prosecute Donald Trump brought these charges precisely because of who the defendant was rather than because of any

specified criminal conduct. The political underpinnings of the case further blur the lines between the judicial system and the electoral system, and this verdict likely will be the subject of a protracted appeals process. I want to correct one thing she wrote. Bragg did not campaign on prosecuting Donald Trump. However, he did make it a focus of his campaign that he was the most qualified to take on the investigation of Donald Trump, to hold Donald Trump accountable. That investigation had already been going on. A slight distinction there, but one that I think is worth making, given the accusation. Alvin Bragg is an elected Democrat, for sure. And his office had investigated first several financial crimes that they thought that

Trump might have committed, came up short, and then eventually found this one. I'd also like to read you a Robert Jackson quote. For the lawyers listening, you will know that Robert Jackson is sort of the most heralded prosecutor. He's the Supreme Court Justice who heads over to Nuremberg. So when he has a quote, we all like to use it all the time. He said in answer to what's a prosecutor's spookiest power. He said that he will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted. It is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books

or putting investigators to work to pin some offense on him. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong, political views or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself. Can you guys both react to that? How reasonable is it for people to be feeling this way about Donald Trump, even for those who loathe Donald Trump? And is it, or is Mike right? A jury of 12 people found him guilty and criticizing this case is itself undermining the judicial process

and the rule of law? And we shouldn't be doing that. Jonah? think you can do both. Look, I have no brief against these jurors. Now, it may turn out when I see, you know, Nicole Wallace do a six-hour love fest with them or something that I would change my mind, but as- Don't give her any ideas, Jonah. You guys, you should have watched Michael Cohen on MSNBC last night. It was, I like, I was waiting for them to ask, you know, if he could lift a boulder so heavy, only he could lift it or something. I mean, it was wild. But, I have no brief against the jurors, right? They are deferring to the instructions from judges, from the judge, about how to do the thing,

and they did it according to the rules as explained to them. And when they needed the rules explained to them again, they asked for it again. And from what I understand, not being a lawyer, and I agree with Mike, this downside's not being a lawyer, but being able to see a reflection in a mirror is nice. the instructions as given lend credibility to the juror's decision to go with a conviction, right? I mean, it was like reasonable jurors came to a reasonable conclusion here as the law was explained to them. I also think the law here has a high probability of being an ass to go Dickensian on you. Insofar as I find the second, the second quote unquote, crimey thing that doesn't actually have to be proven as a crime.

just has to be proven that there was some nefarious intent that turns the misdemeanor into a felony. I think it's super sketchy. I think the fact that state prosecutors do not typically enforce federal election laws, particularly when the relevant agency of the federal election law looked at this and said, yeah, we're not, we're not going to go for this. I think the judge leaned over backwards in favor of the prosecution in a lot of ways. And I think this is a good example of Trump law. I'll add a third component to this, which is that, I also have zero sympathy for Donald Trump. Zero point zero sympathy for Donald Trump.

He comes, carmically, he deserves all of this. He could have offered a better defense that I think it would have gotten him off, but he refused to do so for reasons of ego and politics. He has spent his entire life abusing the justice system and got himself impeached

the first time for basically wanting to use the justice system illegitimately after the thing that he did got himself impeached the second time he basically asked the Justice Department to issue a press relief that he could work with to create the illusion

that there were crimes committed so he could steal an election. I come from the looking for trouble school of karmic justice. So don't stoop the porn star. Don't lie about it on your books. Don't use this hack goober henchman

to do your bagman work for you. Don't lie about the whole thing and then refuse to actually admit the truth as a way to get out of things and then complain about how you were found guilty when you deliberately offered a bad defense. He deserves the bad karma that he's gotten and all of this.

Where I get off the bus on all that is to say, when people compare this to Stalin's show trial, it is simultaneously wildly anti-American and a kind of, it's on par with Holocaust denial insofar as what Stalin's show trials involved was literally torturing family members in front of innocent people forcing them to sign false confessions, knocking their teeth out with hammers, breaking all of their fingers, inventing not just laws in the Jackson sense. But facts, it was an institution of grotesque totalitarian terror. And to say anything that we're doing in America resembles any of that is wild exaggeration. And it undermines faith in the rule of law as much as the hinkiness of this case. So, John is feeling pretty chill about this whole thing, Steve. Yeah, I'm sort of right where Jonah is on all of that.

Um, I think this was a bad case. Um, you know, I went back actually and re-listened to the advisory opinions that you and David did right when the indictment came down and the statement of facts. And you each walked through the problems with the law and the problems with the, the facts at the time. And while we certainly learned more, uh, through the trial and some of the seemingly sort of discrete bullet points that were in that statement of fact that weren't connected to other bullet points and seemed a little odd were put into broader context. I don't think the fundamental problems that you, and it must be said, many liberal commentators or some liberal legal analysts and commentators said at the time

were ever resolved for many of the reasons. that Jonah suggests. So I think it's a bad case, and I think it's an unfortunate moment. On the question of Alvin Bragg specifically, I think, Sarah, you're right to make the distinction that you made about Susan Collins' claim that Bragg campaigned on a promise to get Donald Trump. But we should be very clear that getting Donald Trump, even absent and explicit promise, was at the center of his campaign. This is how the New York Times put it on April 15th, 2024 in a profile of Alvin Bragg. They wrote that the, quote, the race had become a referendum on who could best take on Trump. In a primary campaign of would-be

Trump slayers, Bragg sold himself as the most experience. And then if you look at what Bragg himself actually said. He allowed that he would go where the facts would take me and said he would follow the facts, but he also said, I'm the candidate in the race who has the experience with Donald Trump and later said, I believe we have to hold him accountable. Elsewhere, he was asked about specific things in the public domain that Donald Trump was alleged to have done and very clearly said that they violated that in his view, they violated the law. So, okay, he may not made a direct and explicit promise to go after Donald Trump to get himself elected. But that's what his campaign was about. And that was implied in everything that he did at the time. That's just

hugely problematic at a time when Donald Trump is claiming that all of these cases are cases in which prosecutors of the Department of Justice. I mean, Trump conflates this in wildly dishonest ways. So to most of his Republican defenders. Say, you know, pretend that Alvin Brown. is working for the DOJ. I mean, it's gross sort of on all sides of this. But in this case, what I think we saw Alvin Bragg do was what many of the biggest Trump defenders claimed. And I think that's problematic for a bunch of reasons. Just a final point on that. You know, Trump's defenders here, it gives me no pleasure to say that, well, I think they're right on some of this stuff. Trump's defenders here almost certainly would be making the exact same arguments

in, I think, with much less cause on the Georgia State case, on the January 6th case, on the classified documents case, where I think the fact set and the law is just much, much clearer than what we're talking about here. And I think it's problematic that this is the way that Donald Trump has been arguing about this. This is what he's been sort of predicting. And add to that the fact that Joe Biden sent a team from his campaign to do an event at the courthouse earlier this week and that Biden himself was sort of mocking Trump in that video challenging him to the debate. I hear you're free on Wednesdays. And I think you've got a point where the people on the right who are making these arguments are angry beyond, beyond any measure, and I think it portends bad things.

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aren't going to make much of a distinction. They're going to defend him no matter what. But there's a lot of people who wouldn't. I'm one of them. Ellie Honig, a well-known legal commentator and former New York prosecutor, is another. He wrote in New York Magazine,

and I'll just read a couple portions of this, the judge donated money, a tiny amount, $35, but in plain violation of a rule, prohibiting New York judges from making political donations of any kind to a pro-Biden anti-Trump political operation, including funds that the judge earmarked for, quote, resisting the Republican Party and Donald Trump's radical right-wing legacy. Would folks have been fine with the judge staying on the case

if he had donated a couple bucks to re-elect Donald Trump, MAGA forever? Absolutely not. Most importantly, he goes on, the DA's charge against Trump pushes the outer boundaries of the law and due process. That's not on the jury. That's on the prosecutors who chose to bring the case and the judge who let it play out as it did. The district attorney's press office in its flacks often proclaimed that falsification of business record charges are commonplace and indeed the office's bread and butter. That's true only if you draw definitional lines so broad as to render them meaningless.

Of course, the DA charges falsification quite frequently. Virtually any fraud case involves some sort of fake documentation. But when you impose meaningful search parameters, the truth emerges. The charges against Donald Trump are obscure and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor in New York or Wyoming or anywhere has ever charged federal election law as a direct or predicate state crime against anyone for anything. None ever. Even putting aside the specifics of election law, the Manhattan D.A. itself almost never brings any case in which falsification of business records is the only charge. So yes, Jonah, first, I just, I highly agree with

you that in this case, the jury should be applauded. These people did a civic duty that a whole lot of other people wanted to get out of, didn't want to do, didn't want to take the burden. They did. They took their time out of their lives and their families and their jobs and everything else fun that we all got to do. And they did this, which wasn't fun. So this is no criticism of the jury whatsoever. But like in the Ted Stevens trial, which remember, went to trial right before the election. he was found guilty by a jury who did their duty. And then it turned out that the prosecutors, actually the judge in the case,

I believe called it the worst case of prosecutorial misconduct he'd ever seen. They had withheld evidence. There was at least a lot of evidence that they knowingly put a witness on the stand to lie. So much so that the judge didn't just order a new trial or anything like that. He set aside the jury's verdict

saying it is if there's been no verdict at all because there was such a miscarriage of justice, the jury basically did not have a case, a real case in front of them. So you can say that the jury did their job, but a guilty verdict does not clean a legal problem away from a case, right? And I think this case had a ton of legal problems

from the get, still to this moment, and the fact that folks like me and Ellie Honig, lawyers who don't like Donald Trump and are happy to tell you just how strong that classified documents cases to the point that there's like no defense that we've heard

on the obstruction charges? I think that should earn some credibility here with people like you, Steve, and you're not, I'm picking on you, but I've heard this over and over again. Well, that's what they're going to do. They're just going to defend Trump

no matter what. They think that we shouldn't prosecute former presidents. They think Trump's above the law. Nope. This case can have problems, even if the other cases are dead to rights totally justified. No, Sarah, I'm with you, just to clarify. I agree with that entirely. And it's one of the reasons that I'm so frustrated at this is a case that went first, right? Because it almost deprives us of the opportunity to see who would have actually stood up and made those principled arguments. I do think there would have been more people. I do, I also think now, though, you're going to, to have people who might have been expected to

or we might have hoped to make such principled arguments who are so turned off by this or so persuaded that because this case was so bad, the broad, sort of directional argument that Trump and his supporters are making is true. Certainly we're seeing that among elected officials. You saw that, you know, and there was this moment a couple days ago

where the judge made clear in his instructions that the jury did not have to be unanimous on the predicate crime and that they could come in, you know, for believing Trump was trying to hide one crime for thinking another, for thinking another, and that would be fine so long as they were unanimous in the actual 34 counts. And you had people who knew better, who know better, like Marco Rubio, like what Josh Hawley did, he made a sort of a blanket statement, but you had Republicans who knew better, who you might have expected a few years ago to make those distinctions and to make an intellectually honest argument, who just sort of waved their hands,

offered this broad condemnation, leaned into the conflation of what the judge had actually said with this perception that this meant that the jury somehow now didn't have to be unanimous on any of these other things. I think what we're seeing on the right is this level of anger and frustration again some of it i believe justified that will have as a consequence mean they're not taking seriously the the problems and the fact set in these subsequent three cases and it all just then becomes partisan and political mike yeah i i i keep coming back to the failure of Trump's defense team to make the best case on behalf of their client that I think would have up the likelihood of a hung jury.

And this was this decision not to not to stipulate quite a bit of the prosecution's case and make a straightforward defense, it just, It seems to me that that was the moment for Trump and the forum for Trump to push back on a bad case, which I agree with all of you, that is a bad, weak case. And the fact that they didn't do that, I think really speaks poor, whether it was because of Trump's own hangups about not wanting to cede even an inch. in how perfect and good he is, whether it was just bad defense. I don't know. It seems like that is the forum in which prosecutorial, I won't go so as far as to say misconduct, but sort of bad behavior on the part of prosecutors, can be remedied.

And the fact that the Trump defense team didn't do what I think they could have and should have is a problem. But all of this puts into mind the big picture for me, which is whether we're talking about Bragg or whether we're talking about Marco Rubio misrepresenting things, or whether we're talking about what is the best remedy for holding Trump accountable, it seems that there has been a failure across the leadership class, no matter what, no matter what party, no matter what position, you can look at the second impeachment and the trial in the Senate if you want to find a place in which political elites, the political leadership class failed and have continued to fail and put us into this terrible position that we find ourselves in at this

moment. I just do not think that we can overstate the sort of class failure here. And if Trump is reelected or if we have political violence because of this, I think collectively the political class has the bulk of the blame. In the places where the people have had sort of more agency here, whether it's in the form of the jury or in the form of voting, in elections, you know, Americans have impeached themselves much better than the political class. This raises, I think, an important point. I think we have a massive collective action problem where there was a time in this country where you would have had a bunch of people in a room, maybe even a smoke-filled room, where they would say, yeah, of course these criminal charges

are a stretch. The Democrats are being hacks. This goes too far. But then again, Donald did stoop the porn star. He did pay the hush money. He did do all of these other things. And this will just look so embarrassing for the Republican Party and so embarrassing for the country to drag this thing through a trial. We got to talk to Don and say, for the good of the country, let's come up with some sort of solution that we don't go through this. No such people, no such rooms, exist on this or a dozen other different things. There's no one in the Democratic Party you can reach out to and say, hey, look, let's figure a way out of this. Let's not put this through the country through this. There's no one in the Republican Party that you can do that. And if Donald

Trump had a tiny fraction of the patriotism that he claims to have, he would have skulked off after January 6th and not plagued our institutions in our country anymore. His refusal to take anything like the high road in any regard and force every institution and every individual to debase themselves with sycophancy and support and to destroy, to make the brand of the Republican Party purely a cult of personality thing. And not even being able to conceive of why he shouldn't do that is part of the problem. You know, you had Larry Hogan, who was like Like, in the before times, I would be a pretty big critic of Larry Hogan as a big, squishy, blue state kind of rhino Republican guy. But he's an honorable and decent man.

And he put out a statement saying, let's all stay calm, respect the rule of law, respect juries. There's a legal process here for appeal, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's no reason to go crazy. That's basically all he said. You know, I'm paraphrasing. And Chris Lasavita, the campaign manager for Donald Trump, says, responded something like, congrats, you just destroyed your political career. The idea that that is a proper response to somebody saying, remain calm and respect the process,

gives you a sense of how FACTA this moment really is. And my basic attitude is shame on everybody. I don't care who threw the first water balloon. the entire system is in this giant, dumb-ass softmoric water balloon fight and at last it's not going to end with water balloons and I think everyone should be ashamed of themselves for their contribution to this collective action.

Okay, so let's move to the politics of this. Because what I... Here's the big question. Did this change anyone's vote? Either direction. Did it move people who were considering voting for Trump to say, nope, I will not vote for... a convicted felon. There's been some evidence that those people exist in the polls. I think those

polls are dumb because they're taken before any of this happened. And frankly, I think if you ask those people, what is Trump charged with? They wouldn't be able to answer that in that poll two months ago, three months ago that we saw. So I would throw those polls in the trash can and set them on fire. But that's at least some evidence that there could be people who say that just being a convicted felon means that they will not vote for the person. There is also, I think, at least circumstantial evidence, that there are people who were sort of on the fence about Trump, really loathe him, but believe that the Democrats have proved themselves to now be the greater threat to democracy and the rule of law. You know, Steve, you mentioned Biden's campaigns, press conference,

the jab about being free on Wednesday. I think some of the, you know, left-wing media's reaction to this, the fundraising appeal that went out right after the verdict that didn't mention it. And the biggest piece of evidence, of course, for this is the Trump campaign's statement that in the, what's been less than a day, since the verdict, Trump has raised a total of $34.8 million, double the biggest day ever recorded for the Trump campaign. It, in fact, multiple times during the evening brought down the platform that those donations were collected through. I had a friend who told me

she had five people in her world donate to Donald Trump, who were not big Trump fans, and that several more tried but couldn't get through the website. So, yes, this is sort of rank punditry, Jonah, but which way do you think this nets out? Or in a different way of asking that question,

When do you think we'll know, like when will you feel confident saying, aha, I think we've got this because I got to tell you there's going to be snap polls like today, tomorrow. They're going to try to have captured this. And I will also throw those in a trash can and set them on fire because to me, this is all going to be about people's news sources, who they're talking to. It's going to have to marinate for a little while for people to sort of feel out where they are on this. So, Jonah, go. Yeah, so we actually just talked about this in the editorial meeting. I think that's right. There was actually a good emergency pod, not as good as the AO emergency pod, but there was a good emergency pod over at 538 about some of this as well. And they talked through the polling question. And one of the problems you get is like, first of all, people are really, really bad at predicting how they're going to feel about an event before the event happens. Like there's actual research on this and like you predict your feelings about how you feel if you get a raise or promotion. And then how you actually feel when you get the razor promotion is very different. There's all sorts of stuff about that in romantic life.

We can talk about another time that is analogous. And I think that so people don't, people don't know. It's not predictive what they say to a pollster beforehand. But it's also not predictive of what they're going to think six months from now. Like, it's entirely possible that Donald Trump's poll numbers go up or down in the next two weeks, next three weeks, because of this to one extent or another. It's probably possible that they don't as well. How predictive those polls are about how people will feel six months from now, you know, in November or when, I don't know, when does early voting actually start, is unknowable.

But I, this is a point I made in the editorial meeting, but like, I tend to think that the real significance of this in terms of the punditry isn't going to be how people feel about the verdict or the appeals or any of that stuff. it's going to be how this changes Trump's behavior and how it changes Biden's behavior and their various surrogates. There was evidence in like some of like the Bronx rally and some of these things where he or Trump had these moments

where he actually like talked about people's real problems and seemed to be following the advice of his campaign to be like the less insane person. This event is going to give Trump all sorts of permission to be the more insane person for a while. while. And it, it, it, getting into his headspace might be the most significant thing here. Similarly, I could see the Biden campaign completely screwing the pooch by leaning into he's a

felon, he's a felon, he's a felon, he's a felon thing. And it doesn't sound like they're doing that right now, but who knows where it goes in two months. And, uh, and that'll just make Biden seem more of like a cheater, more of like out of touch, all that kind of thing. So, and the short answer is, I have no freaking clue, and I don't think anybody else does you. Steve, I don't think this is making people love Donald Trump. You know, there's a lot of like making fun of like, oh, you weren't going to vote for him before, but now that he's been convicted of 34 felony counts, now you're going to vote for him? No, if you talk to these people, it's not about Donald Trump. It's about the left. It's about what this says about the left, what they're willing to do to get

power. They're voting against Joe Biden. This is negative polarization at its peak moment. or do you think, as one of our colleagues, I think, tends to believe, nope, they were always MAGA, they were always going to be MAGA, and don't believe their, you know, rationale now. Yeah, look, well, I think the first and most important thing to say is what Jonah said at the end of his rant, which is we don't know. I don't know. Jonah doesn't know. Mike doesn't know. You don't know. Nobody knows. Talk to the people in campaigns. They don't know. Nobody has any idea. I actually do know. Steve, Steve, I actually do know I'm just not. All right. Well, keep it, keep it to yourself. And then later you can say, as I suspected, this is the outcome. So it's really important to say that, and we don't do a ton of speculation here, but I think with that caveat, we can do some. But if you look at the campaigns of Republicans who are in competitive races, they're not rushing out to make big pro-Trump statements, right? They're mostly being quiet, which I think is interesting.

The secondary effect is if this redounds negatively to Republicans and to Trump. And I do think there is, you know, part of me thinks like, let's not overcomplicate this. The guy was just charged with a felony. A lot of people who weren't paying attention, who weren't paying attention to the race and people who weren't paying attention to the details of the trial and wouldn't be wouldn't understand or wouldn't know about the objections that that we all just raised to the way that this was done are going to just see that Donald Trump is now a convicted felon. And I do think that that'll matter to some people, the people who told pollsters they thought it might matter.

But it's it is sort of a new reality. And I think when you combine that with all of the other things that Trump has done over his career, the public statements he's made calling for the prosecution of his political enemies repeatedly for the past eight years. The ways in which he's skirted accountability before, it's not hard for me to imagine that a sort of semi-engaged voter would say, gosh, okay, this guy's, they finally got him, they finally got him, and not sweat the details. But if you're Trump's campaign and a thing that you think you need to do is motivate and galvanize less engaged voters who are sort of temperamentally with you or at least super frustrated with Joe Biden, could this be the thing that has that effect? And I do think that

that's the way the Trump campaign is, is looking at November. They're saying, how do we get the people who are sort of more or less with us, but don't vote much to go and vote? Could this be galvanizing for those people if they make that case seems equally plausible? This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place. With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint

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And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Mike, give us your political thoughts, feelings. Well, I will repeat sort of what I said in our off-record editorial meeting a few minutes before we started recording this podcast, which is in terms of how we, I think we at the dispatch should approach reporting on this question, on the political ramifications of the verdict, I am always in. interested in the swing voter. And in particular, when it comes to Trump, the swing voter is the suburban, usually woman in the areas around Milwaukee, the areas around Detroit, around Philadelphia, around Atlanta, around Phoenix, in those key swing states. who, what does this verdict and what does what Jonah just described, the sort of the changes and behavior from the campaigns and how they approach the campaigns these last five months,

how does their vote change? And I think that once we start to get a good handle on that, we'll have an idea of what the actual nuts and bolts political ramifications were, I do want to emphasize that there is a lot of cynicism or a kind of fatalism that nothing matters in this election, that nothing will change the way things are. The way things are, are the way things will be for the next five months. And I just, I reject that. I think this is, this verdict is a, is a thing, is a moment that, that can, has the ability to change the trajectory.

And, and that could be to either Trump or Biden's benefit. Again, we don't know. And, but, but, but, but I believe that the fatalism that nothing matters, this verdict won't change a thing, is making an assumption. is making a false assumption and is sort of reflects maybe a cynicism of those of us in the political journalism class that is doesn't reflect the way that lower information voters, you know, accept and learn these things and make judgments and changes and how they view the election through moments like this. This is one of those moments.

Anyone want to take me up on a bet? I have a silver dollar, literally. I have a silver dollar right here. And I will bet anyone that the polls in September do not look the same as they look now. What does that mean? I don't know. Does anyone think that it will be the same? Like that the polling, that Mike's wrong, that basically this will stagnate.

Everyone's kind of where they're going to be. And the polls are going to look the same in September as they do today. But I just don't know that that. would prove that Mike's wrong because other things other things will yeah yeah no that's right because you're never going to prove causality i'm not going to have that fight with someone nope it's just that the polling average of today i think will not be the polling average of september i'm actually agreeing with mike but but i but i agree with you yeah so i it's i'm not taking that bet sarah i've got four silver dollars by the way so i don't need yours

steve i'm just curious because you take stupid bets steve are you sure you should sure you don't want to make a stupid bet? We'll see. We'll see if my bet is stupid. Well, let's get to that. You should wait to win it before making such declarations. Donald Trump is set to be sentenced on July 11th. Again, from sort of the legal side of this, I think it is unlikely that he receives any prison sentence from this, but not impossible. Judge Merchant is known for giving harsh sentences to white-collar criminals. On the other hand, given Trump's zero criminal history, his age, and just the other factors that one would generally consider in sentencing,

I think it would be unusual for someone in Donald Trump's position to get any prison time. And even if he did, it would also be very odd for that to not be suspended while his appeals are pending because he's not a flight risk. In New York, that's generally the practice. etc. The judge can override that, but that would be very, very unusual. Jonah? Ms. Isker? I have a question.

Counselor. Please call me counselor. Neil Katjell? It felt a bit like the wish being the father of the thought to me, but he was making the case on one of those shows that because Trump was not a model defendant, I think we can all agree on that.

And is not likely to show any contrition and is not likely to stop and had to be gag ordered and all of that stuff and was contemptuous and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It was making the case

that Mershan will be hard-pressed not to have some sort of incarceration to it. So I have a two-fold question. One is the legal. How much does that sort of behavior, if he were a Tom Dick or Harry behaving like this and behaving the way he's behaved,

would that militate towards, gag order kind of thing and then second is a comms thing it feels really stupid to me I mean I'm not trying to insult Neil Kotel I think he's probably an honorable dude and all that kind of stuff but like Dems it feels like the

the MSNBC left is setting itself up to think so that Chris Hayes and that crowd can have a special when Mershan does not put him in jail to freak out about the impossibility of justice in this country and that the expectation has to be set at the

orange jumpsuit because that's what these people wanted all along. And it feels to me like that is really bad messaging for Democrats. So both questions. Several reactions. One, this is coming from the same crowd, by the way, that says that we should not have nearly as many people in prison and that nonviolent offenders should not be serving any prison time. And maybe we should get of prisons altogether, that prison is actually sort of creating more criminals, et cetera. So interesting that, like, that's true when it's sort of a nameless, faceless person, but when it's someone who they politically don't like, they're like, prison sounds like a great idea. So A, on the flip side of that, because there was such an enormous spotlight on this case,

let's be clear, Donald Trump has had, in many ways, the best due process of any criminal defendant in the country, in the sense that we've all been watching. every single move. So the judge has had to dot every eye and cross every T. Do I think that he's opened himself up to a lot of appellate issues with the jury instructions and several of his sort of decisions along the way? Yeah. But it's not like he was asleep at the wheel. He did those things knowingly. Same with the prosecution. Would that every criminal defendant in the country, especially state prosecutions, got that kind of attention to detail? Again, it doesn't mean that he got the law right. It means that he, you know, was working pretty hard to get the law right

though. So for those on any side of this who this is their first time kind of paying attention to the criminal justice system, assume with me that Trump has had sort of the best process there is. Okay. Now on sentencing. It is the case. And I'll just speak about the federal system because I'm not, I don't know anything about New York law. Like, it'd be hard for me to know less about New York law. In the federal system, for instance, if you accept a plea deal... I think you can do it, Sarah. Can I? Can I know less?

If you show some commitment, I think you can be even more ignorant of New York law. Go for it. I believe in you. If you accept a plea deal and accept responsibility for your actions, you get a sentencing reduction because of that. But if you go to trial and you're found guilty, of course we don't then give you a sentencing reduction for accepting responsibility. because that would basically give you the choice at that point between getting a lower sentence but not being able to appeal your case because you just said you did it on the record or being able to appeal your case but getting some gargantuan sentence all because you wanted

to appeal your case because you think there's legal infirmities with your case. So in that sense, no, Donald Trump standing up and saying, I did not do this and I'm going to appeal it, so do your worst, shouldn't affect his sentence. But people are human. And I think the bigger issue for the judge in the sentencing, and one that does apply across the board, is this idea that punishment is not just for the person who is standing in front of you, it is also a deterrent. And when you have celebrities and big name people, that can have an extra deterrent effect. And the reverse, right? If you give that celebrity a pass, then everyone's like, oh, this is the only time I've ever heard of this crime, and it turns out it's no big deal

if you commit it. And so sentencing judges do take that seriously, and how you balance that is going to be up to the judge. It's worth noting, Neil Cahill isn't the minority. I wouldn't say he's an outlier in believing that Trump will get some small amount of prison time, but there's no question that more lawyers, if you surveyed them, of state prosecutors, including state prosecutors in New York would tell you that a defendant in Trump's position is unlikely to get prison time than those who are telling you that he is likely to get prison time. So on your communications point, which I think makes that even weirder, right, that like more people are saying, nope, a normal defendant with this exact, you know, classy felony, 77 years old, no

criminal history, would not get prison time. And yet they're like, prison, prison, prison. it, I think it's a huge mistake because, again, it feeds into this idea that you loathe Donald Trump, you think he's just a terrible person six ways to Sunday, but the left is proving to be more of a threat because they hate Donald Trump politically and therefore they're willing to throw him in jail for something that other people wouldn't go to jail for, that other people wouldn't have been charged with even because they hate him so much politically. And if they're willing to do that to him, then they're willing to do that to their political enemies writ large, which means this is about power. And if I'm having to choose between two sides

that are both just power hungry and willing to punish their enemies, then I might as well be on sort of the side that I agree with who's going to be authoritarian, then the side I disagree with who's going to be authoritarian. And that gets down to the double haters, right? There's two terrible choices for president. So which one is the greater threat to me and my family? And the Democrats, when they're rooting for the orange jumpsuit, are proving themselves to, I think, at least some people as being the greater threat. And if you're listening to this and dismissing it by saying, well, Sarah worked for Donald Trump, Sarah loves Donald Trump, Sarah's a MAGA fanatic, all of those things, just take a beat and ask yourself whether what I might be saying might be true for some

people, not you, not your family, and not your friends, but for other people who are of good faith. They are simply seeing this in a different way than you are, and it doesn't make them evil or bad the same way in what I'm about to ask you guys, which is steelmanning the left's version of this. To them, Donald Trump committed a whole lot of crimes. He finally goes to trial for some of them. And yep, they might be the stupid ones. But you know what? Those other cases didn't get to trial because Donald Trump used his, you know, shenanigans and got them all delayed. Why is Isn't this, Mike, justice? The case was brought.

There was a grand jury. There was a judge. There was a prosecutor. There were 12 jurors who were a jury of his peers who got evidence. This isn't like the Ted Stevens case. There's no allegation of prosecutorial misconduct here. Isn't this just about people who like Donald Trump thinking that, you know, this is unfair because he's running for president? And why should running for president allow you to commit crimes?

with impunity. Yeah, I don't know why you've made me the constructor of the steel man here on this. Look, but I think this whole discussion, and what you've just raised, which I think is a good faith argument from Democrats and liberals. Not every Democrat and liberal is making it,

but I think that that is out there. And if you were to describe the best faith argument from them on why this is okay, you have just sort of laid it out. It seems to me that at the base, the ultimate problem here is that Trump's influence on all of us is corrupting. He and the circumstances by which he has warmed his way into the political system has corrupted everything for all of us, even for those who are trying to come. to some kind of viewpoint or decision in good faith. There is no clean, clear answer here.

I could take the steel man from both sides of this argument and feel comfortable adopting it at any point. Just ask me on any random day, and I'll find something that comforts me about that argument. and I will also be uncomfortable with it as well. I do think, I question not the good faith of Republicans who argue that the left is the greater threat here. I do question their judgment on that. It seems to me it's a difference in degree and a difference in kind, the sort of abuses of power on on Democrats vis-a-vis Trump,

that seems to be a reaction to the sort of the sui generis aspect of Trump is unlike anything that anybody has ever dealt with and so, you know, they're trying their best, they're making mistakes and some of them are acting corruptly. But if I keep coming back to January 6 and the whole effort to overturn the 2020 election.

The thing that's frustrating about this is that Alva Bragg's case really doesn't get to that fundamental problem with Donald Trump as a presidential candidate and as a possible future president. The January 6th incident does, and it just underscores what a failure of leadership happened in the United States Senate with that second. impeachment trial. So to bring this pod to its inevitable conclusion, let's do a little not worth your time. Joan, I'm curious how much you think when we ask Americans about this case in a month in polling, whatever question you want to ask, sort of similar to the 17% of Americans who

believe that Joe Biden overturned Roe v. Wade. What percentage of Americans will this have not been worth their time. With the caveat that you're right, and Trump doesn't spend any prison time, because I do think prison time clarifies the mind in a certain way. And Trump, without makeup, which was in an orange jumpsuit and without the hairstyling that he's accustomed to, that image could actually change a lot of people's minds in various ways. I don't know how, but I could just see that happen. Assuming that doesn't happen, very little. I think within six weeks, this will be, oh, yeah, that thing that happened. If he doesn't get prison time, which I think might be the hidden motivation of a lot of people who were saying it's got to be prison time,

is they kind of, even if it's a pre-rational suspicion, what they want is the image, right? They want that image. And if they get that, that's the, that's the, the payoff on all of this. It's sort of like the premise of Wagga Dog, right, is you got to pay the admission price to get that payoff. And, but if it's just a fine and maybe two weeks of home confinement or something like that, this will be just another one of those things that happened. Mike, was this case not worth their time for most voters? And I don't mean if we ask them, like, name the New York statute that he was charged under or even to go into great description of the case. But how many people are really going to know or care what this was about?

I think most voters will not. I think a marginal number of voters, it will matter for them. And that could make all the difference in Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania. That's what I have to say about that. And with that, we'll talk to you next week on The Dispatch Podcast. You know what I'm going to be. Thank you.