The Megyn Kelly Show - Michael Cohen Hammered by Defense, and Raising Resilient Kids, with Gary Vaynerchuk, Andy McCarthy, and Dave Aronberg | Ep. 794

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

Megyn Kelly is joined by Gary Vaynerchuk, author of "Day Trading Attention," to discuss staying positive and being practical in life and business, how to get the attention of your audience in America today, how social media has changed the way we communicate, how hard work trumps luck, today’s social media algorithms giving anyone the opportunity to succeed, how false praise is destructive, worry about judgment from others hurts our happiness, how modern parenting often lacks consequences and accountability for kids, and more. Then legal experts Dave Aronberg and Andy McCarthy join to discuss the latest news from the Trump business records trial in NYC, Michael Cohen getting hammered on cross examination, whether he's hurting the prosecution's case despite being their supposed star witness, the details of the alleged "hush money" payment, all the discussion about whether or not Trump “reimbursed” Cohen, whether the jury will believe convicted felon Michael Cohen despite his history of lying, Cohen's changing story in the media vs. on the stand, and more.Vaynerchuk- https://garyvaynerchuk.com/attention/McCarthy- https://www.nationalreview.com/author/andrew-c-mccarthy/Aronberg- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZl9z2UMvN9mwpUoU9-E9bA Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow 

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. It's Thursday. So the Trump trial is back in session. Michael Cohen back on the stand and getting hammered during cross examination. It's getting kind of fun from what we hear inside the courtroom. The jury is now paying attention. They no longer look bored and it's on between the Trump defense attorneys and this proven liar, this admitted liar. I mean, watching him try to wiggle out of his lies is actually slightly stomach turning. He's so gross. I mean, Andy's going to make the point. He's here. McCarthy, legal guru to us all. I mean, he's just brilliant that, you know, it's a little tricky because the more of a scumbag they make

this guy into, and he is a scumbag, the more Trump risks the jury looking at him being like, this is your right-hand man. This is the guy you brought on to work for you for over a decade as like your quote fixer. He's disgusting. Stormy Daniels is a person you allegedly let into your hotel room. Like, what are you doing? What kind of a person are you? And I'm sorry, but there may be some effect with those married women in the suburbs with all that. Like, who are these disgusting people? If I ever were to get indicted and they had Abigail Finan on the stand for three days, I'd be so proud. I'd be beaming with pride. I'd be with love for people to see my right-hand person or my lawyer. My lawyer is an upstanding, well-respected fight. He knows how to fight

kind of guy, but like within the lines, he's an ethical man. He hasn't gone to prison. I don't know. It's just gross. It's gross. I feel disgusting. I feel like somebody had some disgusting movie on that I had to watch and I didn't want to. Well, anyway, that's what's happening. So Andy's going to be here and so will Dave Ehrenberg in just a minute. But we begin with a first-time guest on the show. 170 million people in America use TikTok right now as it's being forced to divest from China or be banned in the U.S., right? They're being forced to separate from their ownership or be banned inside the United States. This comes as recent polling finds more and more young people are spending nearly every waking hour online. We've got the perfect guest to discuss how social

media is influencing our youth and beyond and all of us. Gary Vaynerchuk, also known as Gary V, has millions of followers online and is a prolific entrepreneur and investor behind brands like Facebook, Uber, you name it. His rags to riches story has inspired people around the globe, and he's generous with his advice to help others to succeed in their own right. This video alone has more than 55 million views on TikTok. Watch. Negativity is dramatically louder than positivity. If you analyze the world, social media, mainstream media, your household, negativity is loud. Positivity tends to be quiet because it's got internal strength to deal with the negativity and it doesn't bother itself with the negativity. Because of that, we have a world that is louder about bad and quieter

about good. When this became obvious to me, I felt like I had to get loud about the truth of the world. And here's the truth. The world is better today than it's ever been in the history of mankind. Yet so few people believe it. His new book, Day Trading Attention, is set to be released next week and is available for pre-order right now. Gary Vee, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. Okay, so walk me through that because you seem to be in the business of positivity, and I would venture to say I'm in the opposite kind of business. The news is, we always have fun discussing it, but I wouldn't say it's a positive

lane of professionalism. Look, I think I'm empathetic. You know, the news has historically run with the waves of the world, right? If you go look at, you know, the news in 1992 after the Berlin Wall falls and we're in this moment of pre-internet and good prosperity. And like, so, you know, you just happen to find yourself during an era that looks more like the 60s and other eras where, look, unfortunately, and I don't think anybody on any side is like thrilled that there's so much contentiousness and anxiety and, you know, debate going on. It's exhausting. It's hard. You know, to me, positivity is something people struggle with because most people think it's delusion. And I'm empathetic to that. I was born in the Soviet Union

and came to this country as a little boy and really worked ridiculously hard to get to where I am today. And the only way you do that is not through delusion, it's through action and practicality. So for me, believe it or not, I actually think positivity is practical because I do believe that humans find what they're looking for. To your point, when you have to report on the news, and if there is a lot of anxiety and tension and conflict going on, well, that's going to be what you're seeing, right? On the flip side, if you're someone like me that focuses on entrepreneurship and growth and where the opportunities are, every day I'm seeing people create new, incredible things for themselves and their families and for the people around them. And so, you know, to your point,

it's just a little bit of the luck of the draw that my life is within entrepreneur land, which is very heavily predicated on offense, a.k.a. practical positivity. All right. So you're a big tech investor, which would require some positivity in the early days, the ability to see the dream and not crap all over it because it hasn't yet been realized. And you've done very well in choosing where to invest. I mean, Facebook, that seems like a good one. I know you're mad at yourself for not investing more in Uber, but how, how were you able to see the seams in those stories, right? How were you able to see the vision when so many did not? It's what, it's why I wrote this new book, day trading attention. Think about, let's break that down. Where is the attention of society right now, platform-wise, and what's interesting in culture? So I focus on two things, distribution and what topics are. This is something that will land with you very well,

because you've masterfully built an incredible career, I think, in understanding both of these things. I think it's getting more complicated now. I don't have to tell you, since you grew up in that industry and era, television is changing. What we're doing together right now, you and I, radio has changed, both with Sirius and podcasting. And social, I think, is just an enormous thing that people misunderstand. It is so much bigger. Forget about even the politics of it. Should TikTok be banned and all this? Facebook this? I'm talking about from a marketing business standpoint. I'm talking about Louis Vuitton and BMW and Nike. And very honestly, the people that are driving right now and listening, whether they own a car wash company or a flower shop or a

liquor store, or they're a lawyer that wants to get more clients. The amount of opportunity within social is like extraordinary, but being good at it's hard. Just telling everybody right now on this show, go post on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and YouTube shorts and LinkedIn and Snapchat and Pinterest as often as you can. Okay, that's nice, Gary, but what about how do you do it? And so what I'm seeing right now is the greatest opportunity for people to build fame, awareness, win their local elections, or sell stuff, grow their business, reverse the negative trends that their business are feeling by growing or starting something. And by far the biggest opportunity is absolutely organic social media, hosting diligently, strategically, being good at it, but doing it at volume daily. And I

view this kind of like health and wellness. Like if you eat well and you put in work in the gym, miraculously, you look better than if you had not. And so the people that are actually good at day trading, you would be flabbergasted by the level of science and effort that me and my organization, I run a very large advertising agency called VaynerMedia. Think of it as like, for everybody who's listening, the madmen of this era, right? We're the fastest growing, biggest, largest global agency. We have hundreds of people who are employed every day working on just trying to figure out how the first three seconds of a video should look, what copy should be there, what's the thumbnail, what time should we post, which platform is giving you more extra reach right now.

This is a real skillset. And I would argue, I would argue everybody that's listening to this right now grossly underestimates A, how complex and fruitful it is to be remarkable at marketing on social, but it's not just social. It's, let me give you a big business one. The Super Bowl, Megan, is by far the most underpriced ad in advertising. For $8 million,

you get 130 million Americans to watch your video. The problem is, if your 30-second video stinks, you just wasted $30 million because it's not just buying the media, you got to make the commercial, you got to pay the celebrity that's in it, you got to do all this ancillary stuff. So the media is underpriced, the attention is underpriced, but the creative is the variable. Even using your career, there have been many people that have been on television that have been given a shot. But if they're not compelling, if the content isn't good, they don't have long careers with lots of opportunities like you have. So to me, it's not only getting the attention, but then do you know what to do with it once you get it?

It's very tricky. I've thought about this in the past when you take somebody like, let's take a Joe Rogan. One of the things I admire about Joe Rogan is he never gives interviews. You never see the splashy magazine layout with Joe in a lawn chair in the hand behind the head. You don't see him going on everybody else's podcast to promote his podcast, but he got into it a lot earlier than virtually everyone else. So he's had years and years and years to build it up, but he does almost no promotion. And even like the past couple of years, he's become a bigger star. So he kind of gets,

I don't know, organic promotion as people talk about the news he's discussing or making. But how does a guy like that with absolutely no marketing effort become as huge as he has? Distribution. And also, and you'll know this because it's the interview game. As you know, so many of the programs that you grew up in and probably what you looked up to and admired when you were growing up, the guest mattered. You know, Barbara Walters getting the get mattered. We tuned in because we wanted to actually hear from who she was interviewing.

So he interviewed a lot of emerging up and coming comedians and thought leaders. Excuse me. And so it was a combination of both being very good at getting people that were on the come up, which is a big part of how I think about day trading attention. It is about finding emerging talent or emerging trends in fashion, food, politics, news,

whatever it might be. And then YouTube has natural distribution. YouTube, I mean, a lot of people don't know this. YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world. Google is number one and YouTube is number two. And a lot of people search those personalities or topics. Joe popped up. They're like, wait, is that the fear factor guy? Is that the UFC guy? They listen. The content was good. And you slowly build. It was funny to hear you say, and you said it right, Joe was in it early. You said it virtually before most correct at scale.

Yet back to like what has built my career, Joe started podcasting five or six years after most of the people that I saw start podcasting way back when, right? And so like, it's crazy how early some of these stuff starts. Now, forget about, again, the political news. That's a whole, it's crazy how early some of these stuff starts now. Forget about again, the political news. That's a whole, that's above my pay grade, but TikTok from a marketing standpoint,

everyone is aware of it. Now there's videos of me in 2014, talking about an app called musically, which was basically TikTok and then TikTok bought it and incorporated in. There are people, and you know, this same with research or getting the scoop in news. There are people, and you know this, same with research or getting the scoop in news. There are people that are just actually in the dirt, meaning they're doing the actual work. They're closer to the consumer. They know what's going on. For example, I wake up every day and I look at the app store to look at the top 100 free apps, just to see if anything's emerging on it that might become the next TikTok or Facebook, you know, and that's work, right? Like it's, you know, it's free information, but I choose to want to know what's rising. And that has allowed me to be a good investor and a good marketer.

And I think that that is what I would challenge everyone who's listening to. So many people listening right now, on the left, on the right, in corporate, in entrepreneurial land, they dismiss social because they tried it a little bit or they have some sort of emotional feeling towards it, politically, normally, or socially, bad for the kids, bad for the country,

all of which are incredibly valid. What I mean by that is you're allowed to think anything you want. What I'm excited about is for the people that are trying to build something here, this is free distribution. And what's really crazy, this is really crazy. You'll appreciate this because you've been around it long enough to know how real what I'm about to say is. Social that you and I grew up with was more like email marketing. We tried to amass as many followers as possible. And then every day, a certain percentage of those people would see our post. Social in the last three years is now every individual post has the potential to get tremendous

reach, right? So you showed a video earlier that got 55 million views. I'm going to open it right now, just to really, because I want people to be educated with me being on right now. My latest post on TikTok currently has 5,600 views. Nothing, nothing, right? Even though the one before that has 297,000. That was never true for the first decade. You would stay within the same range because you had a certain amount of followers. I have 15 million followers on TikTok. I have a certain amount. I'm going to get a percentage. Now it's about the creative, the actual post.

Let me tell you why this is incredibly intoxicating. That means every person listening right now who's never used social to build up their business or any other thing that matters to them, donations for their nonprofit, awareness to support their friend who's running for local office, or anything else. That means anyone listening right now who's not put in the 15 years of work that I've put in to get to this place, they can post one video and it can get more views than I've got because they made a good video that people care about. That is a level of meritocracy and democracy that is unheard of in the business and marketing world. That's why social media is so incredibly unbelievable

for businesses, entrepreneurs, and corporations. And again, the book is called Day Trading Attention. The person I'm thinking about now is Mr. Beast because I met him at a conference last year and he was there and so was the head of YouTube. And the head of YouTube got up there after Mr. Beast had been interviewed and it was very interesting. But the head of YouTube was saying, Jimmy sits there all day and tries to figure out the YouTube algorithm. He knows it better than I know it. He knows it forward and backward. He knows what hits, he knows what doesn't hit.

This is not just some kid who came up with like goofy videos to do that would make people laugh or make people feel good. He figured out early on what you're saying, what will get the 55 million and what won't and exploited it to the max. I don't even know how to start doing that. And by the way, like, cause I think words matter really not exploited it really just strategized it. Right. It's really kind of cool to your point. You made a great point there.

People think this is luck. There's no luck in this game. This is a real skillset. You could say LeBron James got lucky, but it's not true. He was gifted physically, but there was a lot of work into it. Right. You could say anything you want. To your point, Jimmy, I'm sorry, Mr. Beast, like I watched him because I've been in the

game. I mean, I posted my first YouTube video around wine on February 21st, 2006. The app hadn't even been out for a year. I've been there the whole 18 years. And what I can tell you was very early on, which is why I have a relationship with him, it was obvious to me that he was gonna win because he understood thumbnail culture.

He understood cadence. Think about everybody telling you and every show you've ever been on that you got lucky. They don't know how much writing goes into it, how much prep work, the cadence, the strategy of what you're gonna say before you go to commercial break when you do television. These are real things. This is real business science. changing so fast right now. What I wrote out here, more in a textbook environment than anything else, a blueprint, a manual, is what MrBeastJimmy did on YouTube. There are people doing it on every platform, from LinkedIn to Pinterest to Facebook to TwitterX. And every person listening

has the propensity or opportunity to be better at one or two of the other platforms. I have a lot of pride that I'm one of the few people on earth that has a tremendous following across all of them. And obviously my organization markets on all of them. And what I tried to do in this book was teach people why each platform is different, how you can pop on one versus the other based on these skill sets. Be self-aware and know if you want to be in videos or if you want to be a writer or if you want to do audio. There's a lot of ways to win this game. What I don't want, which is the biggest issue, is I don't want people crying that they can't. I want people to be accountable and understand they

can if they choose to. Yeah, because you know people are sitting out there right now, Gary, thinking I I wasn't on whatever Fox News. I didn't invest in Facebook. I've got two followers right now. This isn't going to work for me. I I'm I'm a home designer or I'm whatever a photographer. This is never going to work for me. And by the way, I'm empathetic to that. But I also the reason I was so excited seven minutes ago is I'm going to say it again, Sally, who's sitting and listening right now. If you were a manager of a local flower store in Madison, Wisconsin, and you've never posted, but you'd like the store to do better because you'd like to be an owner of your own flower shop. The fact that you can make a video right now and post it on TikTok or Facebook or Meta,

and it has a chance of getting more views than a video that I post or Megan posts, that is a level of merit and a level of speeding up the shortcut of what you missed out on. That is extraordinary. And if you don't do anything about it, listening right now says, well, I'm still not going to,

they need to understand that they're the problem. Now, if they don't complain, Megan, then I'm fine. If you don't have the ambition to build your business, if you don't, if you prefer your macro privacy over everything, I think that's beautiful. I think that's allowed. My rant right now is for the people that sit around and complain and say everyone else is lucky and don't do anything about it. That's to me is the issue at hand. If you're content and thrilled with life and have no interest in growing your business or your economic opportunities or your influence opportunities, it's not my cup of tea DNA wise, but boy, do I understand it. And I think that's beautiful.

People should be able to see the world differently and live different lives. But if you are a complainer, if you are a jealous Johnny, if you point fingers instead of pointing thumbs, you have no excuse because even the excuse of, well, Gary, you got in early and yes, you did work hard, but you're eight years ahead of me. The fact that the algorithms and social media are now completely empty and based on people's interest in the first hundred people that are served that video, that is a level of opportunity that is like the gold rush. And back in the day when everybody moved out to California looking for gold, this is a gold rush of opportunity.

And most people aren't talking about this because they bucket social media into this just like general vanilla statement. This is the nuances, Megan, this is the opportunity. And it's a big deal. And as you could probably tell by my voice, I want this for people.

Like I want people to understand they can. I just don't, I think if, and by the way, if you're listening right now and you don't think you can't, you need to rethink who you surround yourself with. Sometimes it's your cynical mom or your best friend. People need to be very, very, very particular about who they hang out with and what they listen to, right? Because if you're in that muckery, you're not going to do it. Of course, if you think the world sucks and you never can, you're not going to do anything.

But the second you think you can, it changes everything. And for years, I've been talking about this, but the opportunity is bigger now because random things go viral, Megan, as you know now, in a way that you didn't six years ago. I know. If you're sitting out there and you're thinking, I can't, I don't have a tail, don't be an Eeyore. Actually could like actually try to consider whether that kind of thinking is your worst enemy and nothing beyond that kind of thinking is your worst enemy that you could actually be on your path toward going viral with your product, with your store, with your business pretty soon. If you just pay attention to what's working and if you buy day trading attention, which isn't about day trading and sitting there pushing stocks,

it's about all the stuff that we're talking about right now and how anybody can grow their business exponentially with, by being smart and putting in a little like elbow grease. Elbow grease. It's, you know, just let's make this very simple for everybody. Hard work matters. There's an outcome from it. Let's not, let's, I think a lot of people that are listening will agree with me on this. Anyone in your circles that demonizes hard work, I'm not asking for people to burn out and have mental breakdowns, but anyone who doesn't understand that elbow grease, well said, is a part of the equation to get to a happier place, they're very delusional of the history of life. Yeah. I feel the same. Honestly, even in my job, I think that people trust me because they

know I give them facts and I've researched what I say. I don't just come out here and read what I, what I saw on X. And over the years, people build up a trust of you, you know, with you like, okay, she hasn't misled me. I can take it to the bank. And they know that like to, to deliver these complex things in a way that's digestible does take a lot of work. I would say that's the difference between myself and many, many in the news industry. I will spend hours figuring it out so my audience doesn't have to. I watch everybody and everything. It's what I do for a living.

I'm completely aware that you didn't stumble into this audience. This is real work. And everyone can do it. I mean, it doesn't matter what it is that's your particular focus. You do have to have some gusto. Everybody can do it if they're self-aware. They have to find things.

I'll give you an example. I was an atrocious student because I wasn't passionate about Saturn. I didn't want to learn that. I just didn't. And so I think what hurts people is they're also not willing to be humble enough to say, I'm not good at this. And I don't like that, you know? And I think, right. You like that.

I'm glad that you picked up on that. There's something really powerful to that. I'm going to say it again. You have to have the humility to say, I'm not good at this. And I don't like that. And what happens is if you have that sentence with yourself, then you end up going to the place of, I am good at this. And I do like that. And so I'll if you have that sentence with yourself, then you end up going to the place of, I am good at this and I do like that. And so I'll give you an example. Don't you think, Gary, this is another reason why false praise from one's parents is counterproductive? It's devastating. The parent doesn't have to be putting the child down all the time, but should not be falsely praising things that the kid is actually not good at.

I don't know if you can see this. Do you see the goosebumps I have right now? Oh, yeah. Yes, I do. Do you know why I have this? I actually- I know you love your mama. Well, I love my mama the most, but let me say from where you're going, I believe that eighth place trophies over the last 30 years have done more mental health damage. Do you understand that these kids, and I'm very fortunate, we hire so many kids right out of school. I have hundreds, I mean, 700, 800 employees, maybe even 1,000 now that are 22 to 25. And I can tell you unequivocally, and so much of my audience is this age, I read all my DMs.

I, like you, do the research. I read. When I tell you the amount of kids today that are scared to lose because we taught them that losing was bad. It's so bad that we'll give you a trophy even though your team lost 14 to 1 in this game. And you'll appreciate this. I think this will make sense to you. All of this was well intended. It wasn't like all these parents came out 30 years ago and said, let's create soft kids that are zoo animals that can't live in the wild and are going to have really tough lives because they don't have a backbone or they can't deal with adversity or they don't have the stomach for pressure. They just thought they were doing

the right thing. The problem was it wasn't. To your point, you can do anything is true for about a nanosecond until you start trying. I can tell you right now that I see unlimited six, seven, eight-year-old kids on sports fields all around New York City that immediately I can tell you that child is not capable of playing in the National Basketball Association. You know what I mean? And that's okay. When I walk through a classroom and see the art hanging that the kids made in sixth grade, I can save a lot of time right now. It is not true that any one of those kids can make art that will sell at Sotheby's in the future. That's great. You can try everything, but you can't be everything. And when you fall in love with who you are versus who you wish you were,

then it becomes game over. I, in fifth grade, wanted to play for the New York Jets. I, by sixth grade, realized I was more likely to buy the New York Jets than to play for them. That made me go into entrepreneurship, not professional sports. And by the way- I love this story, by the way. I want to hear the story. You finish your point, but I want to hear the story about your mom and your sweater. I thank you for that. I'm always happy to share the greatest human being of all time, my mom's story.

To finish my story, this is very important. I think for a lot of people, this is a big one, actually. I'm 48 years old. When I was getting Ds and Fs in school in the late 80s and early 90s, as you know, Megan, and a lot of people listening right now,

entrepreneurship wasn't cool. It wasn't a thing. Everything was about what's the best university you can get into and then what's the best job you can get into. That was the status. That was the cool. That was the, right?

There was, when I heard entrepreneur in my youth, that meant that you were like a loser and you made pretend that you worked. Yeah. And when you heard about somebody dropping out of college to pursue, you're like, oh my God, loser. Loser. And so, you know, I, but I was willing to lean into who I was because that's where my happiness was.

And then I got fortunate that the timing of the world went in my favor. And now I walk around the world and people want to take a picture with me. This is nothing I even thought in a million years. All I wanted to do was sell wine for my dad's wine store. Do you know what I mean? Like, I just wanted to be a businessman. I didn't call it entrepreneur.

I'm going to be a businessman when I grow up. That's just what I want for everybody. Don't worry what we think. Don't worry what I think or Megan thinks or your friends think or your family thinks or the neighbors and definitely not anonymous people on social media. Think about what you think.

Think about what you think because you're gonna be 90 years old one day laying there and if you have regret, I promise you that's gonna taste a lot worse than people making fun of you because you wanna open up a bike shop or you're quitting your corporate job to do landscaping. This judgment of others is destroying our happiness and it must stop as if anybody else's judgment has anything to actually do with your life. It's so true. Oh, I love what you said.

And I love it. I've heard you say that you don't believe in regrets. And I think my audience knows same. I just, I don't really have many. I don't spend my time thinking about that kind of thing. I think it's a real mental block toward going forward and advancing your life, your wellbeing, your happiness. But anyway, one of the reasons you're like this and wound up a happy, seemingly well-adjusted man is mom. And that brings me to the jets and your childhood experience. Can you just tell us that? I love this story. Yeah. Thank you. I'm just tell us that? I love this story. Yeah, thank you.

I'm going to try to compose it here. This is such a big deal. When I tell you that without a shadow of a doubt, it is uncomfortably clear to me that 89.6% of why I have happiness and contentness, and by the way, back to my professional success, I'm detached from my professional success, meaning I love my career. I love being good at it. I'm humbled by the admiration and opportunities of doing things like this. It leads me to, but I don't think it defines who I am. Like, I don't think like I'm good or a good guy or a

winner because I'm good at business. I think it's a skill I have that is now kind of revered a little bit more than it has. It's always been respected, but now it's cool, right? It's pop culture. And all of that is because of my mom. My mom was, back to what I just heard you say, I think you would love her parenting style. She was rainbow and sunshine. I had nothing but joy around my household,

except when I did things that were not right, which led to real accountability. I was grounded and punished four times a year, like clockwork, because I brought back a report card that looked like garbage and that was unacceptable. And other than that, I was a pretty good kid, but if I ever did anything, like I would, first of all, let me go to a place that I think may resonate with you.

I never even contemplated disrespecting my mom or dad. Oh gosh. My mom. I mean, I did it because I was a bratty teenage girl, but man, oh man, my mom, Linda made me pay. Yeah. And by the way, Tamara made my sister Liz pay for the same teenage girl thing. I never went through that phase, but on real talk, it was because I was worried. She was an old school, like we don't play that around here. Like, like we are in an era now, look, I can wrap my head around why we stopped spanking our kids. Though, if I'm being unbelievably transparent, like I could get, you know, get a couple of glasses of wine in me and I can, I can get into like a thoughtful of like,

is there an angle there? But, but the fact that we don't even ground our kids anymore in modern parenting, are you kidding me? All we're teaching people is that there's no consequences in life. Do you know why everyone's so interesting on Twitter? Because you can't punch them in the face when they say something to you. I grew up in Jersey in very blue collar, lower middle class neighborhoods. Let me tell you what happened when we would say something fresh to each other.

Somebody might get punched in the face, right? And so we live in a society now where there aren't ramifications, there aren't consequences. And I couldn't agree more with people understanding, like, actually, actually, maybe you'll like this. Do you know why the book cover is purple? Because we've become, and boy, oh boy, nobody understands this better than you in this audience. America's become unbelievably red and blue. Like, we are really loving red and blue. When it comes to parenting,

if you can be purple, then you win. To your point, and you said it earlier, I'm not talking about scolding your children. I'm not talking about what a lot of parents did to their children. Listen, I'm going to be vulnerable here. My grandmother, what she did to my father, and she was a Russian woman in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, 60s, 70s. This is no judgment. They grew up in a, people don't understand the USSR, Megan. The USSR was like North Korea. You weren't allowed to leave. It was jail.

It was, I promise for everyone that's listening here, which means you listen to a lot of politics and world news and care about this stuff, you have no clue what the USSR was from 1917 to 1991. It was bad, bad. So I don't judge my grandma, but I'm very aware of what a human looks like when they don't get positive reinforcement, when they get negative, when they get that all the time. My father is one of those people. And it really, it's a real

challenge to have true self-esteem when you're parented in that negative of an environment. So I'm not saying to everybody to do that, but to parent in a delusional way where everything is great and you're the best and go fight your kids' fights. Megan, do you know the parents go to school and try to argue with parents to give their kid a better grade? Do you know how crazy that is?

I know. It's absolutely nuts. And beyond. In corporate America too. I've told this story before, but we had a friend at a huge investment bank in New York City. We had dinner with he and his wife, and he was telling us that he actually received a phone call from a new hire at this major American bank from a new hires mom complaining about

her son's tough schedule. Yeah, I mean, I mean, look, you know, what's amazing? You know what's amazing about You know what, you know, you know, what's amazing about being born in the Soviet union and living in America. You realize that people have options. My parents were, were granted jobs that they couldn't transfer from in their early twenties before we moved to America. When, when people come to my company and we have a, listen, I believe in the happy culture in a way that you can't imagine, but not delusion, not entitlement. And when people are like, yo, this blows, this stinks,

this sucks, this, this, I, you know, I always, honestly, I take it pretty serious. I'm not ivory tower. I try to attack it. I try to have meaningful conversation. We go try to address it. But when somebody comes a second, third, fourth, fifth time and complains about things that don't matter,

like it's one of the most joyous things that in my career that I'm able to say is like, Hey, unlike me who was born in a communist country and luckily I got out and definitely unlike my parents and grandparents, you have options. You, you don't like this company, but you don't want to go to set up to that mom. I said, mom, first, and this is that I'm going to tell you exactly what I would have said, not for this show, but real life. I would have said first mom, I think it's very sweet that you're calling for your son in one part of me. The other part of me thinks that your son's in big trouble because if you're fighting his fights and he's a grown ass man, he's got a big problem. And here's the answer to your question. Yeah. And here's the answer to your question.

He's more than welcome to do this schedule. We hired him for a reason. We think he's got talent, but if this schedule is too tough for him, he really needs to consider doing something else. Yeah. That's what I always say. I always say on my team, you know, you don't want to work weekends. Occasionally you don't want to work a late night when news breaks, go work at key bank. It's wonderful. You know, exactly what the hours are. Go show up at nine, wait for you're good. And I want everyone to hear this because this is an important nuance. And I don't judge them. You don't want to? Good. Know yourself. Right, no problem. News may not be for you. Mazel tov. You want to go chill? Do you. Do you. I chose to completely punt school. Everyone told

me that I should get A's and B's. I told myself I should get D's and F's. And it was joyous. It was joyous until I got grounded every marketing period. But it was more than fun for me. Same now in real life. I may want to be hungry and build meaningful, everlasting empires that have positive impact and selfish and selfless goals. But if you are structured a different way

and you value something else, and to your point, the occasional discomfort of needing to do something that's out of the normal structure, then that's amazing. You shouldn't work in an entrepreneurial, in my world or your world, fast-paced reality. You shouldn't be a fireman

if you're not willing to wake up when the fire happens. Right? And that's okay. That's very okay. This is important. I do not judge people that do not have my ambition or work ethic or interests. I just want them to be themselves.

But what I don't want, and this is where I think you're going, and the theme of this, and this will land with everyone, I don't want people to think they can get compensated when they're not that person. Right? If you don't wanna be the, let me make this simple for everyone to understand. to think they can get compensated when they're not that person. That's right. Let me make this simple for everyone to understand.

If you don't want the pressure of being the quarterback and you want to be the backup linebacker, well, then you better not expect to get quarterback money. That's exactly right. Can we have the conversation, everyone? You're allowed to do whatever you want, but when you start sneaking into entitlement that you should, there is no should.

Hey, everybody, everyone who's listening, you want to get way happier? You want things to go way better? Let me give you something. Eliminate the word should from your vocabulary. There is no should. It's too nuanced. What do you mean should?

This is why I get so crazy making about everyone judging everybody else you have no idea what's going on in their house you don't know their background you don't know what's going on today what i said something the other day kid comes in yelling about their manager who's been good to them for three years i hadn't had the information yet to know what was going on but i said to the kid i said but you've loved her for three years what if she's been what what if you're struggling I said to the kid, I said, but you've loved her for three years. What if she's been, what if you were struggling with her for the last three weeks?

Because three weeks ago, she found out that her mom is terminally ill and she hasn't told anybody yet. Maybe that's why she's not showing up to the meeting and over coddling every moment. Like maybe, you know what I mean? I don't think we, you know, people love throwing around empathy

until it's not working for them. You know what I mean? I don't think we, you know, people love, people love throwing around empathy until it's not working for them. You know, I like that. I'm ready to sign up. I think I, I think I could do well at your company. If there's news things false throw, I'm going to send you my resume. No, wait, I want to hit a couple of other things in the news. Cause I'd love to get your take on a couple of news items. I saw something I didn't totally understand in the news today about Google and AI and how Google is now announcing that it's got this new AI program that's going to quote, do the Googling for you. And what they seem to mean is if I type in into Google, um, what's happening with the presidential debates in the search engine, rather than bringing up a link to CNN and Axios and Fox news, it's going to deliver, the AI will deliver the

information for me. Here is what's going on with the debates. They're going to have, and now already news organizations are complaining about this, saying this is going to absolutely gut human jobs, that all the reporters who work for those news organizations and others are going to go away. And their work, like whatever's left inside the companies, those people's work will be cannibalized by Google AI, which is going to claim it as its own and offer it up as like its work product. And it seems to be a rather big deal. But what do you think? There's a lot there and I'm excited to break it down with you. So number one, AI is a big deal. Let's get right to the punchline for everyone. Will AI eliminate tons of jobs?

It sure will. Now, this is where people like to choose cynicism and defense. Megan, will AI create an enormous amount of new jobs? It will. There's going to be a word that's going to be on the top of everyone's tongue in five years. It's called prompt engineering. It will be a huge skill set. And you probably remember this. Remember 15 years ago when everyone's like, I need to make my kid an engineer so they can build websites. That's what you're going to start hearing of everybody with prompt engineering, which is the critical thinking required to put in a good prompt into AI so that you get an answer.

Let me keep going. Search engines, as you and I know it, this is gonna really land for you. Remember when search engines came when we were kids kind of coming up? Yeah. Do you know what that eliminated? It eliminated the yellow pages.

Do you know how many people were employed and how many businesses, do you know that how many businesses are named, do you know that that eliminated? It eliminated the yellow pages. Do you know how many people were employed and how many businesses? Do you know that how many businesses are named? Do you know that businesses are named triple A plumbers, triple A cleaners, triple A, you know how you've seen those? Do you know why that is? That's because everybody used to use the yellow pages

and it was alphabetical. That's right. And so- GPS got rid of Rand McNally. That's right. Google got rid just want to remind everybody that- GPS got rid of Rand McNally. That's right. Google got rid of Encyclopedia Britannica. Like so many of the things were replaced. So AI is going to replace search engines.

That is true. That is true. Now, people will still use search engines for quite a while. It'll take time. There's even people you can find that use AOL dial-up right now, many more than people realize. So there's things that linger, as you know. But the reality is, yes, it's going to change. Now, don't forget, that's Google's AI. And then there's going to be OpenAI, Microsoft's AI. There's going to be many different

AI chatbot clients. There's going to be startups that start. And don't forget, that's just intent based. I want to make sure everybody understands what I'm saying here. That's when you wanted to go look up something in the encyclopedia. That's when you needed a plumber and you went to the yellow pages. The way you go to Google now is when you decided you needed something to look at. On the flip side, there's social media, there's podcasting, there's the media where you are just browsed, like you're kind of living and it's coming to you. So it's not like everything's going to get eliminated. Just new things are going to pop up. But that's been the story of all time. You know, I always say this, Megan, I think you might innovate. You're going

to like this one as well. I think people love innovation and entrepreneurship and technology when they're not on the receiving end of the being hurt by it. You know, what did all the, Megan, what did all the poor people that owned bookstores do in the mid nineties? They got picked on first. A guy named Jeff Bezos came along and he subjectively and strategically decided he wanted to go after bookstores first. If he would have picked flower stores or car washes or, rightons. Technology is going to get around to you one day or another. Here's a good one because I was an early investor in Uber. All the medallion owners in Manhattan and all the black taxi owners in LA, they laughed at Uber

early on. I know because I was there and I was talking to them. They're like, no, we've got the government in our pockets. No, this is New York. What do you need Uber for? We have the best transportation system in the world. They were all laughing until they were crying. I don't think people get it. This is only one outcome. By the way, back to your world.

Network TV was loving life until something invented called cable came along and created a little bit more distribution of all that attention. No longer was it just on Walter Cronkite or Peter Jennings. Now we had cable and Ted Turner innovated with CNN. And now cable's hurting because of the invention of the digital lane and people like me and shows like this. Yeah, I get it. It's forward motion. All right, I've got to get in the TikTok thing. How do we feel about this? Are we in favor of what the government is doing against TikTok?

Are we in favor of a ban? I'll tell you where I am personally. I can speak to myself personally. Two things. Business-wise, if all that attention goes away, I'm pumped. Day trading attention. Because the next day, everyone's confused. To me, I'm a huge winner if TikTok gets banned professionally,

because I know I'm better at realizing where the attention is immediately than the other average bears. And all that attention is going to disperse into all new places. And because this is my religion and my insanity, and I'm a mad scientist of it, I'm going to be able to extract more of it for me and my clients, and that's going to be good. As someone who was born in the Soviet Union and who is very into modern history,

I will say as a human being, again, I am not aware of what's under the hood of what the politicians and all the work they've done to decide that this is the appropriate action. I'm not even going to begin to go there. It'd be impossible for me to understand what they think or don't think is happening between China and America. We all understand there's geopolitics going on. That's fine. What I will say is, if I'm being full disclosure on this and being honest, which is how I like to

roll, I'm a little worried that the reason we're banning it is, you know, we're banning this because it's something bad for our country from the outside. Because the history of the world always tells you that it starts with that. And then the next thing, Megan, that we hear is we're banning this from the inside because it's bad for us. This is an incredibly unprecedented slippery slope. And I remind everybody who's listening to this, because boy, if you're listening to this, I know that this interests you because obviously this is one of the faces of political talk over the last three decades. Sometimes it's your four years and sometimes it's not. And if we open the can of worms that we are banning things for the best interest of America, it always starts on the

outside and then it always comes in the inside. And if we allow it to come to the inside, you've now begun the beginning of the entire things that have historically broken down the Roman Empire and all the other things that looked like us for the last hundred years. So I would say, even if, Megan, I'll say something complex that might not land with most people, but I'm gonna say it because that's how I live my life.

Even if it was ugly under the hood of what they got, I would think long and hard about how to handle that, not named ban, because boy, could you, Megan, could you imagine whether you like it or not even talking about google earlier i could you imagine waking up in seven years to a headline that says america's banning google because of the interest of america you you know i think regardless if someone's listening right now that fully believes red or listens to this because they also want to hear the other side and fully believe blue or something in between purple like someone like me i can promise you i

think everybody would understand that that's probably not going to end up good yeah i mean a couple years ago saying parlor was no longer available the alternative the more conservative alternative to twitter well they had said build your own lanes build your own lanes and then they did and then after j6 it was like somehow it's Parler's fault, even though most of the planning happened on Facebook, but Parler was no more like that. To your point. But what's interesting is Parler was no more on the distribution. Like what's so interesting is Parler can go to parler.com and create a mobile native app and not be not like, like what's so interesting is there's always alternatives to capitalism, right? Apple versus Google versus Facebook versus parlor

versus snap versus Tik TOK. There's in the incredible aspect of what America is in entrepreneurship and democracy, though, not at its best. Sometimes it gets weird that there's always a counter move. There's another move. When the U.S. government says ban, that's what alcohol was during prohibition. That's a very different game. Well, that worked out. Correct. I loved this conversation. I hope you come back on and talk to us more about your life philosophy, your background, your bio. And if TikTok gets banned, I definitely want you to come back to tell us exactly where we should put our new, our new attention. Yeah. Day trading attention. All right. It can help anybody, any business owner,

any individual looking to get their message out and be heard on some of these issues that we've talked about. His name is Gary Vaynerchuk. He's huge. You know him. It's a new book. Check it out. It's out next week and available for pre-order right now. Gary, all the best. Thank you so much. I'm wishing you well. Take care. Likewise. Okay. When we come back, we've got Andy McCarthy and Dave Ehrenberg on the latest from the Trump trial. Cohen's on the stand right now. We've got the latest for you. Fireworks inside of a New York City courtroom today as Michael Cohen is back on the stand subject to cross-examination by Trump's defense lawyer, who is really getting after it today. They just broke for lunch and we've got some real highlights

from the morning. We've got two of our favorite legal experts here to break it all down for you. National Review's Andy McCarthy back with me and Dave Ehrenberg, state attorney for Palm Beach County, who has a new YouTube channel where you can check him out called True Crime MTN. MTN like mountain. Is that what it means, Dave? True Crime MTN? Mountain or Midas Touch Network. Yes, Megan. Thank you for plugging it. Okay, good. Yeah, my pleasure. I'll check it out. Andy, good to see you as well. So two prosecutors here, one retired, one still at it, but at least one more defense-minded, I know from what I read at National Review, at least in this case. So let me give you a couple of the highlights or lowlights, depending on your view of Michael Cohen on the stand today.

He was asked by Todd Blanche if during his conversations with a guy named Robert Costello, and some are speculating that the defense has already said they're going to call one witness on when it's time to present their case, that it may be this guy Costello, who was allegedly a go-between between Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani slash President Trump, the sitting President Trump. And that Costello allegedly said to Cohen, you got friends in high places. Fear not. You're good. Kind of like wink, nod. All's well. Don't flip on Trump. But he was brought into the grand jury and he was very helpful to Donald Trump, though not helpful enough because he did get indicted. And he seems to be very favorable towards President Trump and not so much towards Michael Cohen. And so why was Cohen asked about this man from the

defense by the defense attorney? Well, here it is. Todd Blanch asked Michael Cohen if during Cohen's conversations with this guy Costello after the raids, I assume this is on Mar-a-Lago, that he told him he could cooperate against Trump, whether Costello said, you know, you could cooperate against Trump and that Cohen in turn said to Costello, in other words, this is the question by the defense lawyer, did you tell Robert Costello that you, quote, had nothing on President Trump and could not cooperate? Answer, no. Then Todd Blanch asked Cohen if he meant, no, I didn't say that to Costello, or no,

you don't recall whether you said that. Cohen, I don't recall. So, all right, I see why the defense went there. You told this guy you had nothing on Trump. And now that you're trying to get out of prison, you want to get out of all these deals. You want to look better. Suddenly you have all sorts of dirt on the man. And that brings me to the next line, which was supervised release, which I gather Cohen is on right now. Cohen said he tried three times to get his supervised released from prison terminated. And then Blanche pressed him and corrected him and said, in fact, it's been four failed attempts. And Michael Cohen had to admit that on the subject of working in the

White House, which has been an ongoing thing. You wanted to work in the White House. You got stiff armed. Trump didn't want you. You're bitter. He tried to say, no, I just wanted my name out there as possible chief of staff shortlist for ego purposes. He said this earlier in the week. He reiterated it again today. Keith Davidson, the one-time lawyer for Stormy Daniels, said, well, Cohen told me he wanted to be attorney general and that he was suicidal when he wasn't chosen. I know all of our hearts just skipped a beat at the thought of Michael Cohen as the attorney general of the United States.

But OK, all right, we'll calm down and go back to what he testified to today, which was that there was definitely talk about being chief of staff. There were texts between Cohen and his daughter where they discussed whether he would be chief of staff. Cohen's daughter said she read that Reince Priebus was being considered. And Michael Cohen responded, he's pushing like a madman. And that when Trump did in fact pick Reince Priebus, Blanche asked Cohen whether it's true. Cohen told his daughter he was disappointed. Cohen, that I wasn't considered. Yes, sir. And then he acknowledged that he told his daughter that Trump just wasn't happy with the title I wanted. Last but not least, or perhaps it is least, because I've been talking about this story like a Greek tragedy, guys, you know, where he's got this never-ending adulation for this man he

adored and read his book twice and just wanted any sort of place in Trump's circle, wanted to be just like him. And then, of course, it ends in him trying to kill the king and kind of take himself out as well. And the king turns on him too. He couldn't even get tickets to the inauguration. Michael Cohen admits via these texts, he was having real difficulty even getting tickets to Trump's inauguration in 2017. Unbelievable. And he also admitted that, well, he was at least asked about the fact that he was allegedly despondent when the former president of Goldman Sachs got a post in the White House and Michael Cohen did not. All of this, Dave Ehrenberg is trying to paint the picture of bitterness. He's a bitter, bitter liar. Pretty effectively, am I wrong? I think today Todd Blanche has had a pretty good day. I think

he was successful in punching holes. And Michael Cohen, I thought it was actually very powerful, a different part of the cross-examination where he had Cohen admit that his testimony in front of the judge was a lie when it comes to his tax cases. Remember, he went before the judge in the civil fraud case and said, I lied to the federal judge about my tax case. That had nothing to do with Donald Trump. And he went back and said, yeah, that original federal judge was corrupt. He was in with in cahoots with prosecutors. So I don't think that made Michael Cohen look good. And he had to admit to lying on the stand. So that's not good. But here's the thing, Megan,

if this were all about Michael Cohen's cross examination and pointing out his lies, then yes, I think the state would be in a lot of trouble. But the state has spent all of its time building this firewall around Cohen with all these witnesses and documents. And a lot of it is even Trump's own words, his tweets, his admissions in a court proceeding in California. And all this stuff has come into play to buttress what Michael Cohen has been saying. So you may not like Michael Cohen and you may think he is a liar, but is everyone lying? The corroboration that the state has spent so much time with, I think helps prove. Let me ask you this, though, Dave, and I'll go to Andy corroboration of what specifically?

Corroboration that Trump was involved from the beginning in the hush money scheme. And by the way, I know what you're going to say. Hush money schemes are not illegal. Correct. But it's telling the story about why the catch and kill scheme was established. And then the big issue, and it was made an issue by Todd Blanch in his opening statement, was whether or not the $420,000 reimbursement to Cohen was a reimbursement for the hush money payments or was it legal fees. And Todd Blanch said in his opening statement that this was not a reimbursement for the hush money payments, or was it legal fees? And Todd Blanch said in his opening statement that this was not a reimbursement. Maybe Andy could help me with this, but I don't know why he said that. I don't know why he made that to be such a big issue, because all the

evidence shows that it was a reimbursement. And so there is no direct evidence that I've seen that ties Donald Trump directly to the falsification of the business records, which is the underlying misdemeanor. But once you put into play that this is legal fees and not a reimbursement, if the state can show, yeah, it's a reimbursement, which I think they have shown, then it's a small step from there to proving that Donald Trump lied on the forms when he listed this stuff, his company listed it as legal fees and not as reimbursements. By the way, it's legal expenses, which I do think is better for Trump than legal fees, legal expenses. I mean, it's amazing to me, Andy, that we are now at a felony trial for a former president of the United States, something we've never, somebody we've never, we never indicted our

former president over the difference between legal expenses and reimbursement to my lawyer. It's that's literally what the case is boiling down to. This is insane. Your thoughts. Well, you know, a part of it is that it's not as clean as all that. Right. The more evidence comes out, you can't. out. What he was paid for had to do with a variety of things of which the payment to Stormy Daniels was a component, but was not all of it. So it's not like the $35,000 a month traces to more than the Stormy repayment. that that's not as clean as it it looks the calling it the calling the arrangement a retainer is not clean um they're they've tried

to turn that into something that's incriminating the more evidence that comes out, the more what you hear is, you know, it was agreed that Cohen could represent himself as Trump's private lawyer while he was president in 2017. Oh, and it turns out that he actually did do some work for him in 2017 and 2018. We all know a retainer agreement. There are different different kinds of them but one kind that you can have is you pay somebody for their availability not necessarily that there is a project but you want the lawyer to be available the retainer does not have to be in writing it absolutely should be in writing but it doesn't have to be in writing and one component of what they paid him for was a bonus. So, you know, Cohn has three different things. He's got the Stormy Daniels NDA, the non-disclosure agreement. He's got this $50,000 he apparently laid out for some kind of digital assistance to spin polling favorable to Trump. And then the last piece of it is what they call a bonus. And the fact that Cohn may have decided that the bonus was, you know, for work

well done in the past doesn't mean that the Trump organization couldn't have decided that it was part of keeping the relationship going in the future. The only reason I lay all that out is, you know, to say it's problematic that they characterize this or described it as a retainer under circumstances where it's monthly payments to a guy who is currently holding himself out as Trump's private lawyer and is actually doing work for Trump and is available to do Trump, to work for Trump at any point. To say that it's like the fraud of the century to call that a retainer arrangement is strange to me. And then let me just address one thing that Dave mentioned, because this is very important. I think this weaving this wall of corroboration around Cohn is a very important thing for the prosecutors to have done. speaking, is legal, even if some of the way the Trump defense is trying the case would suggest you to think that they think it's radioactive and they need to distance Trump from it.

But there's one crucially important piece of evidence on which Cohen is the only witness, and that is there's a January 2017 meeting that Cohen has testified about between or among him, Allen Weisselberg, and Trump, in which Cohn alleges that Weisselberg described how this arrangement was going to be booked. And Trump was present and, according to Cohn, understood what Weisselberg was saying and conveyed his assent somehow. That is the only piece of evidence in the case that ties Trump to the way this was going to be booked in the Trump records. So it's a situation where if I were trying the case as a prosecutor or Dave were trying the case, we would want to be able to go to the jury and say we would never ask you to convict somebody on the uncorroborated word of somebody like Michael Cohen. And we've been very careful that every time we've elicited something important from him, there's a document. There's another witness.

There's something that supports his version of offense. But when you get down to breast tax on that piece of the puzzle, which is a very important piece, he's out there on his own. I want to tell you guys that we pulled an article from USA Today, January 2019, because we've been curious about the in that thirty five thousand dollars a month fee that you just ticked through that the 130, you know, doubled up for tax purposes, allegedly to pay off Stormy, a $60,000 bonus, and then $50,000 to this company, Redfinch. There's been some testimony around that $50,000 to Redfinch was kind of interesting. Cohen testified that he skimmed off the top of it, that that he didn't he didn't think right. They had actually done fifty thousand dollars worth

of work. But I don't know. He paid them anyway. And he took some of the money somehow in some way, shape or form. Cohen cheated Trump. He shorted them. Didn't he short them? He shorted. OK, maybe that's what it is. He shorted them. But he cheated and had to admit on the stand. But do you know, you mentioned it was for these tech services to pay this company to rig a poll. You know what else he got from them, Andy? So he offered this guy, John, is it Gouger, G-A-U-G-E-R? A great name. Chief Information Officer at Liberty University, $50,000 to rig

two online polls in Trump's favor. He's the owner, this guy, of Red Finch Solutions, which is the tech firm that got this $50,000. Well, in addition to these rigged polls, Cohen wanted a fake Twitter fan account portraying Cohen as a sex symbol. The result, at women for Cohen. It went live in May 2016. Here are some of the examples of the posts. May 2016. No wonder at real Donald Trump chose Michael Cohen as his right hand man. He's charming, intelligent and handsome. Oh, man. I'm now convinced I'm now convinced I'm now convinced that Elon Musk is right, that AI may be the most dangerous thing that we have the prospect that we have to live with. People making up social media accounts for Michael Cohen is a sex symbol. If that's the world, I'm glad I'm an old guy and I'm not going to live to see all of this.

Please. The AI can't do worse than this. Wait, just let me give you one more. September 16, Cohen tweeted from his personal account. I was told I look like a younger Andy Garcia. At Women for Cohen responded, you look even more sexy, but the closest doppelganger for sure. Hashtag our guy. Hashtag awesome. This is gold. This is gold stuff. OK, go ahead, Dave.

No, Megan, I want that guy's phone number. I could use that. I want to I mean, I'd like to be compared to Ben Affleck. That'd be nice. So yeah, help me out. Hashtag women for Dave Ehrenberg. Although I just got married, so I'm off the market, but still, I appreciate it. Yeah, I know. So sad. I keep getting asked what Molly Ringwald is really like, so that's my life. Okay. So I do want to talk about now, Andy, as I understand the testimonies that's come in, they haven't, let's go back to that.

They said the meeting happened either January 16 or January 17 of the year 2017. And it was Weisselberg, the CFO for Trump, Trump and Michael Cohen. As I understand it, the testimony that was elicited shows that Trump heard how Michael Cohen was going to submit his bills and that he was going to say was pursuant to a retainer agreement for illegal expenses, but that there hasn't been testimony, at least not from Cohen. Maybe we got it from one of those bookkeeping witnesses earlier about exactly how it was written down in the Trump books. Am I wrong about that? No, you're right. The invoices are really the strongest part of Bragg's case. I now think that to me, to try to organize this as I would try to organize it if I was trying the case, the three things you have to show from Bragg's perspective is falsity, that the documents

are false. Second, that there is a scheme to defraud because they're not the same thing. In the statute, you have to show both falsity and fraud. And then the third thing, to make it a felony, you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the fraud was with the intent to conceal another crime, right? So those are the three things. And the falsity is very important because the falsity is the most basic thing here. If they can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these documents were knowingly and intentionally made false, then you're done. So if you look at the book entries, they book them as legal expenses, as you pointed out before, which I agree is better

for Trump because what they, the testimony about that is, is that they were operating off some like 19, early 1990s software where there was a drop menu. And if it was legal fees to a lawyer or expenses attendant to the representation, they would put it in legal expenses. So theoretically, this is where you would put a storm, even if you were like trying to do it as honestly as you could, that's how they would have booked it as legal expenses. Then you look at the checks. You know, every one of these things, right, has an invoice, a check and a book entry. You look at the checks. There's nothing on the checks that represents anything about what it's for. It's just their checks written to Michael Cohen.

So what the case on falsity comes down to, I think, are these invoices that Cohen prepared and says that this is the way that Weisselberg wanted it done. And the invoices say, pursuant to the retainer agreement, here's my bill for whatever. I have it here. Dear Alan, pursuant to this is quoting from one of your pieces, Andy. Dear Alan, pursuant to the retainer agreement, kindly remit payment for services rendered for the months of etc. And he went through month after month. Right. So I think that that's the that's the strongest part of the case for Bragg as far as falsity is concerned. But it's a big leap to go from that, especially if there's murkiness about exactly what a retainer is. But putting that aside, Trump's got a pretty good argument, I think,

that he didn't get into the granular detail of how things were booked in his company. He knew that he was paying back Cohen. And they have to prove that he caused these documents to be false in the records. I think that's a it's a tough road to hoe. I think that's the that's the best shot that that that Bragg has in this case of proving something along the lines of falsity. But it's it's no slam dunk. That's for sure. So do they pin the, you tell me, Dave, are the documents at issue, the Michael Cohen bills that I just read, right, that read, Dear Alan, and this happened every month,

pursuant to the retainer agreement, which Bragg says was a lie. There wasn't one kindly remit payment for services rendered for the months of January and February, 2017 saying there were no services rendered. He was no longer acting as a lawyer and, and there were no services rendered in January, February 2017. So that's a lie, Michael Cohen's bill. It's also a lie that in the Trump bookkeeping department, the drop-down menu checked legal expenses. Should have been reimbursement. And I guess the only other thing would be the checks, which have nothing on them other than $35,000

and a Trump signature. Actually, Megan, I believe the checks do have the word retainer on them. I look closely at the check, and I think that is where it's deceitful because there was no retainer agreement between Trump and Michael Cohen. And so I think that's where they get them on the checks.

But as far as the other stuff, this is where Andy and I would agree, is that I don't understand why Todd Blanche decided to make it so radioactive to say that there was a reimbursement here. Todd Blanche has laid down the line and said, these are legal fees, legal services. I agree with you, by the way, calling them legal expenses is a broader term that helps Trump. But it hurts Trump to say that these were not reimbursements. So now if the state can show the lawyer to be a liar that they were reimbursements, then I don't think it's a big logical step to then say that the way you treated it as legal services is intentionally deceptive. And although I don't see much direct

evidence that Trump was involved in it, there's enough circumstantial evidence that I think gets the prosecution there. One last thing, Andy brought up a good point. I actually had missed that Cohen did apparently testify that there is direct evidence where Trump assented to the repayment scheme with Allen Weisberg, although that's trusting Michael Cohen's word because Allen Weisselberg is not going to be brought in as a witness. But they do have Allen Weisselberg's handwritten notes, which explain how the $130,000 became $420,000. And I think that's important evidence as well.

Can I just make clear, do you know the answer, Dave? Because, you know, the defense hasn't started its case yet. We just know what they're what they're going to argue based on the cross examinations that we've seen. Is Trump denying that there is one hundred and thirty thousand dollar reimbursement to Cohen for the payment to Stormy Daniels in that money, in that 420? Is Trump denying that he ever repaid Michael Cohen anything with respect to Stormy Daniels in that money, in that 420? Is Trump denying that he ever repaid Michael Cohen anything with respect to Stormy? Yes. As far as the 420, Todd Blanche has denied that any of that is reimbursement. I think that's what's going to get him in trouble, especially when you see documentary evidence, when Trump's own words,

where the 2018 lawsuit where he said he did reimburse Michael Cohen $130,000 to pay off Stormy Daniels, where you see a tweet from around that time, where Trump said that Cohen was reimbursed for the NDA. And then there's this financial disclosure form that Trump put out when he got to the White House, where he said under oath with his signature that, yes, he did reimburse Michael Cohen for an amount between $100,000 and $250,000. So that's what's going to get him in trouble. I think Trump's own words. Why would Trump dispute that? We all agree that hush money payments are not illegal. So why would he dispute? Why isn't the defense very clearly? Yes, I paid. He paid her off. I reimbursed him. She was annoying. It never happened. I got rid of her. That's it. I don't

know how they booked it. Why is he getting into? I never slept with her and I didn't actually reimburse Michael Cohen. I wonder if it was because Trump is ordering his lawyers to say, deny that we ever slept together. And then perhaps he wants them to deny there was a reimbursement. But that doesn't make sense because I think that, Megan, is Trump's best defense to say legal services encompasses a reimbursement.

That was part of Cohen's job as lawyer slash fixer. But when Todd Blanch says no reimbursement within the 420, that poses real problems for the defense. Yeah, can I just add to that? If my lawyer pays off a debt for me, Andy, if my lawyer pays off a debt for me that I owe personally and I pay him back, I'm going to say legal services, legal expenses.

I'm not going to get into the underlying. Like, this seems par for the course, but go ahead and make your point. Yeah. Well, first of all, I agree with that. I don't think I think legal expenses is fine. Certainly not fraud, be reasonable doubt. But to Dave's point, if that is the I hadn't understood that Blanche had planted his feet that way. moronic thing I've ever heard, because not only is Trump on record a number of places indicating that he paid that back, but a statement by the party that's against the party's interest in a trial is an admissible statement. So they wouldn't even have to put a witness on for this, basically. They could just put in all the places where Trump has

acknowledged that the payment was made. So if Blanche did that, that's like a dunderbrain move, which I... Has that been admitted into evidence, Dave? Has the prosecution moved any of those Trump statements you just mentioned into evidence? All three. The 2018 legal document that Trump filed as part of his California lawsuit, civil lawsuit against Stormy Daniels, where he admits that he paid Michael Cohen $130,000 to go to Stormy Daniels. The tweet has been admitted into evidence as well. And the financial disclosure form, where Jeff McConney acknowledged that that was Trump's signature on the form under oath. And as far as what Todd Blanch said, that's his lawyer saying it. Trump didn't say that there was no reimbursement. But Blanch said that and laid down that gauntlet in the opening statement, which to me, I still don't

understand why he did it, why he stuck by that, which eliminates really Trump's best defense. Yeah, I have to say, you know, I now I come at this with prosecutor's bias. So take that for what it's worth. I always think that the case has to hang together logically, because if you're a prosecutor and the case doesn't hang together logically, then that's doubt and you're sunk. So that's the way we have to think about it. Defense lawyers sometimes look at the case a different way. They look at it as, I don't need to get 12, I only need to get one. So sometimes the defense

sort of collides into itself in a way that a prosecutor can't afford for the government's case to go, because you're trying to pick off a juror. And maybe you can get the jury to agree that the NDA is illegal, or maybe you get a couple of jurors to say that Cohn is just a terrible person and you can't convict on the basis of his testimony. They don't have the same obligation to be consistent as the prosecutor does. I stipulate that that's true. However, I've really been puzzled throughout the case, and I continue to be, that if your defense, as I think it should be, is that this stuff is legal, that these agreements are legal, then the last thing I'm doing is either denying that they happen when there's two tons of evidence that they that they happen.

And I don't want to treat them like if Trump is near them or touches them, it's incriminating. I want to like I mean, I would have been tempted during Pecker's testimony. I would have been tempted to be sitting at the defense table in front of the jury doing the New York Times crossword puzzle. I wasn't getting hurt a touch by this. And yet, the Trump defense throughout has really made an effort to try to put big distance between Trump and these transactions. And while I understand why they want to be able to argue to the jury that Trump was not involved in the granular detail of how things got booked. I just think treating this stuff like it's like it's illegal and radioactive and something he needs to be a million miles away from is a big mistake. Well, we had Arthur Idalla on on Monday who pointed out to us. He's a New York trial attorney, pointed out to us that he's very, very good friends with Joe Takapina. And Joe Takapina used to represent Trump. I think in this case,

certainly in the criminal matters that he's been dealing with. And Arthur was intimating, though didn't say explicitly, that Takapina is, you know, like Arthur, a Brooklyn kid and wasn't going to be told by anybody how to try the case because he had strong feelings on his own, what should be argued and what shouldn't. And he's no longer representing Donald Trump. So I do think he was suggesting, you know, Trump is strong arming his lawyer into making the arguments Trump wants to hear himself in court. And that may be to his detriment. That would not be the first time that's happened. I do want to pull up, my team just sent me the Trump tweets that you

were referencing, Dave, because I did, we did at some point go back and look at that Stormy Daniels case between, the civil case between Trump and Stormy out in California. And I know that you and others have argued that he explicitly admitted it was a reimbursement in that in pleadings in that case. When I read it, I have to admit it seemed confusing to me. I didn't say I, I didn't read the paragraph where he allegedly made this admission and say, yup, there it is. I was like, huh, this is it. Okay. I mean, maybe, maybe not as that was my takeaway on it. I don't deny it. I just, it wasn't clear. Here's the, here's the tweet. He writes, uh, this is on Twitter. Hold on. I'll click on it so we can see the date. Uh, five, three 18, Mr. Cohen, an attorney

received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign. So here he's using retainer, you know, as like fee interchangeable with a fee, uh, received a monthly monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign from which he entered into through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties known as a non-disclosure agreement or NDA. And then he goes on to admit this is in connection with the Stormy case. So here he uses the word, he says, through reimbursement. That's how Michael Cohen entered into it. I mean, that's probably good enough. But again, I'm a little unsatisfied, Dave. Is there smoking gun language where he's like, I reimbursed him? Well, do you see the conflict of interest form also that he signed around the same time he submitted to the government where they added that there was a reimbursement of Michael Cohen for a fee, an expenditure between one hundred,000 and $250,000. So those three things. And also,

as far as the first thing you mentioned, the trial court in California, they subsequently came out with a ruling that says that this is an admission by Donald Trump, that this is an admission. So it was my understanding that it was clear that the admission was he did pay Michael Cohen to then pay Stormy Daniels, to reimburse him for the Stormy Daniels payment. But there's a reason just to be clear, Dave, that was to Trump's advantage in the Stormy Daniels case because he wanted to show we struck an agreement. I'm aggrieved and I want a remedy here. Like in that case, he wanted the court to know he had reimbursed her and wasn't embarrassed about it. Correct. And as far as that tweet goes, Megan, that tweet was a was a contentious tweet.

The Todd Blanch and his team fought hard to keep that tweet out of the trial. There was a reason why they didn't want that in there and they lost. And it was admitted because I think they understood how damaging it was. And I just have to wonder if Todd Blanch knew when he was standing up in his opening argument saying there was no reimbursement, no reimbursement. Did he know of this, all this information, this evidence that the state was going to provide? You have to believe it.

It was probably provided a discovery. I just don't know why he had to go there because I think. So now we've done the very thing we were criticizing them for doing, which is we now we've wasted 20 minutes talking about whether he damn reimbursed Michael Cohen for the 130 when it's irrelevant. I mean, it's relevant, but this is not dispositive in any way of the case. He should have just admitted he should have said, yes, I reimbursed him. Hush money payments are not illegal, but I did not know anything about how the bookkeeping went at the Trump organization. I'm a busy man. And it should not be dispositive. You're absolutely right. But you know that the prosecutors are going to make Todd Blanch eat his words because jurors hate when lawyers lie to them.

And when a lawyer promises you something or attests to something in their opening, and it proves to be the opposite by the end of the case, they take that, the jurors take that into the deliberation room with them, and you know that the prosecutors are going to make Todd Blanch eat it. So I think that was an unforced error. Yes, because they're saying, I can't trust him. He lies to me. I can't trust that lawyer because he lied to me about this thing. All right, stand by. I'm going to take a quick break and we'll come right back. There's much more to get to. This case is so crazy. Can

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Get your first three months for free. Go to SiriusXM.com slash MKShow to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MKShow and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MK show and get three months free. Offer details apply. I want to play you one piece of tape, guys, that was played on the cross of Cohen this morning

that had all the media reporters reacting, saying, my God, he sounds so different. And this is a very different version of Michael Cohen than the jury has been presented with thus far. I'm not sure our audience will find it jarring or surprising because we've played a lot of Michael Cohen tape over the past few days. But take a listen to this. It was played in court today. It's a thought from Michael Cohen's reaction to Trump's indictment on his mea culpa podcast March 2023. So I want to thank the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and their fearless leader, Alvin Bragg. He is about to get a taste of what I went through. And I promise you, it's not fun. Picturing Donald Trump being led through the booking process, getting fingerprinted, having his mugshot taken, fills me with delight and sadness all at the same time.

Sadness, I say, because what an embarrassment it is to the office of the presidency to have a former president of the United States handcuffed and mugshotted before the entire world. So, Andy, you've been pointing out all along that they really don't have much. If we go down your list, they have to prove falsity. They have to prove a scheme to defraud and they have to prove that he had an intent to conceal an underlying crime. And that's the alleged election violation, you know, the campaign finance violation. And they just, there's just, I don't, where is the proof of that? Where is the election violation? And there's a debate in legal circles about whether they have to actually prove an election violation or whether they just have to prove he intended to violate the campaign finance laws, which is even more attenuated. But really, it comes down

to Cohen for the most part. I mean, Cohen's the one who talks about the meeting with Weisselberg. Cohen's the one who submitted the invoices. The case rests largely, almost entirely on Cohen and entirely as to that third piece of the elements. And my question to you is, do tapes like this, his serial falsehoods, just completely wipe that out? I mean, are we at the point now where the judge actually could consider entering a directed verdict? So I think, Megan, we have to take a second and take a step back and just remember, and I'm telling you what I tell myself at least a couple of times a day. of the evidence is because we can take it in bits and then analyze it legally versus what the jury is taking in in the courtroom. The jury doesn't get me and Dave to come out every 30 minutes and explain to them what

it all means, right? It would be so helpful. how the judge treats the prosecution's case, because the jury takes its cues in terms of how it understands it, how it at least presumptively feels about the government's case from the way the judge is acting, right? So we can do this antiseptic exercise to say, as I've done, you know, falsity, fraud, other crime, right? That's all very neat and clean. But what the jury is getting is Judge Marchand is very solicitous of the government's case. The Trump defense is acting like the NDAs, even if they say that

they're legal, that they're not, you know, that they need distance from it. The judge is allowing the prosecutors to talk about a conspiracy as if it's already been proved. The judge has allowed Pecker and Cohen to testify that in Pecker's case, there was a non-prosecution agreement and a fine paid to the SEC, the FEC. And in Cohn's case that he pled guilty to campaign finance violations. So the prosecutors are kind of acting like the other crime is not something they have to prove. It's an established fact already. And I don't know, you know, it's going to be very important what the jury instructions are in this case, maybe more so than even in the usual case. But I don't know that the case we're analyzing

is the case the jury is perceiving. And on the last, one of that last point that you made, this goes to, to me, this is one of the biggest disconnects in the case. As you said, Bragg is now saying, I don't even have to establish the other crime. I only have to show that he intended to commit it. That's not how the criminal law works. The way the criminal law works is if you commit an act, we infer your intention from the act.

And it's pretty easy. If you rob a bank, we know what you have on your mind, right? But what the law is very concerned about is if we're criminalizing your thoughts, then we require strong evidence that that's actually what you were thinking. So in theory, you should have to prove more, not less, if what you're saying is we only have to prove that he intended the crime. Like there should be some unambiguous evidence that Trump had the campaign finance laws on his mind and he had a reasonable enough understanding of them that he willfully violated a known legal duty. That's the kind of evidence that you want when it's just an intent crime. And instead, what they're saying is, I don't even I only have to prove like he intended to do it as if that's a lower thing rather than a higher burden. So I just think the case we're talking about that we get to parse may not not man on the street taking Michael Cohen in the form of

$130,000. And then he worked with Cohen and Weisselberg to cover it up and to document it falsely. Is that that's basically it? Correct. And that the crime occurred when Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels $130,000. That was the campaign finance crime. And you don't have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, as Andy said, that that crime occurred. You just have to show that that's why they falsified the business record. So first, you have to show that Trump was involved with the falsification of the business records, and that was intended to conceal the campaign finance crime. Now, I know there are some commentators who are suggesting that there's also some tax crimes that the state is going to allege

because of the way they grossed up the payment to Michael Cohen. I am unclear on that. That just confuses me because Michael Cohen did pay taxes on that amount. So the state of New York doesn't seem to be out any money. So I don't know what they're talking about when it comes to the tax crime. Maybe Andy can help me on that one. But I think the best second crime they have to make this a felony is still the campaign finance crime. Now, on appeal, we'll see if the courts allow a state prosecutor to lean on federal campaign finance laws to elevate a state misdemeanor to a state felony.

We'll see. Yeah, especially when there is no there is no campaign finance violation here. But let me ask you this. So do you agree, Dave, that the evidence they have that Trump was in on the alleged scheme boils down to that January 16th meeting with Weisselberg or 17th meeting with Weisselberg, Cohen and Trump and what Cohen is saying about Trump hearing the way that Cohen was going to bill it. And potentially also Cohen claims that Trump reassured him that there'd be no campaign finance problems with the law because Jeff Sessions, according to Cohen, Trump said Jeff Sessions is in my pocket. Is that,

is there some other bombshell out there that supports Trump knew and was in on the documentation scheme? The testimony that we heard from Jeff McConaughey that Donald Trump was a micromanager who expected him to negotiate bills down, I think, is circumstantial evidence that Donald Trump is not going to just sign off willy nilly on a thirty five thousand dollar per month retainer payment unless he knew that this was for something very personal to him, the hush money payment. So I think you can extrapolate that. Okay, but that doesn't get to the false documentation. That gets to, I knew what it was for. It was the stormy hush money. I'm trying to get all the evidence that proves he knew they were going to write it down falsely.

He was fine with that. He was in on that scheme. And he also had a willful intent to violate campaign. He knew that this was going to violate the campaign finance laws and had a willful intent to do that. So far in that latter point, all I've seen is the alleged conversation about Jeff Sessions. Don't worry. He's in my pocket. He's not going to come after you, David Pecker or anybody else. Right. Well, in February, they had that meeting in the White House where Michael Cohen alleges that he and Trump met and Trump said, hey, are you OK? You need money. Then you'll get your checks for January and February. Go talk to Alan, meaning Alan Weisselberg. And so you'd to believe that donald trump didn't know what alan

weisselberg had come up with this grossing up scheme the way that they framed it that donald trump really believed that this was for legal fees or legal expenses that all this stuff was legit above board when in reality it does look like that donald trump was involved from soup to nuts from the beginning to the end in paying out the hush money and disguising it as these legal expenses. And perhaps it would have been a good defense if he said, yeah, I interpreted reimbursement as legal expenses. So there is no fraud here. But that was undone by Trump's own lawyer, Todd Blanchett, saying no, no reimbursement whatsoever within the four hundred and twenty thousand.

OK, guys, a couple of quick questions on the witnesses. Weisselberg is at the heart of this whole thing. He was allegedly in the room for this pivotal meeting. Right now, we know he's in Rikers. He would not cooperate with Alvin Bragg. So he's sitting in jail on some other cases against Trump. And he's not going to be called because the prosecution says Cohen's their last witness. And I guess the defense is not calling him. I don't even know if you can you call him as a defense. Can you get him out of jail for a day to come testify? Anyway, defense is not calling him. I don't even know if you, can you call him as a defense? Can you get him out of jail for a day to come testify?

Anyway, they're not calling him either, we believe. So why is that, Dave? Well, it's easy to see why the prosecutors aren't going to call him. He's a liar. He's a convicted perjurer. He's sitting in Rikers right now and he's loyal to Donald Trump.

So he's not going to help the prosecution. It's that last thing. It's that last thing that's keeping him off the stand because those first two things are true of Michael Cohen, too. Fair enough. Except Michael Cohen is not in Rikers. But yes, point taken. As far as why the defense isn't calling him, why somebody has this credibility problems, too. I don't know if it's a good look to put on as your main witness, a guy who has so much baggage and they really can't control, although he's loyal to Trump, you know, he could give up something that could ultimately bite him in the butt.

Now, the other thing is this. The defense just seems like they're going to rest without putting on any witnesses at all. And that is not uncommon. If they think the state has not reached its burden of proof, then they don't have to put on a thing. I know for sure that Trump's not going to testify. I did think the expert witness would testify. And right now we're hearing that may not happen. Well, yeah, because they said

that they were going to bring one witness. The defense did, Dave. So that's changed now. I'm I'm hearing that it's an it's uncertain now. I thought it was maybe Andy knows more, but I I got the sense that right now it was in flux. OK, so why do you think Weisselberg is not taking the stand, Andy? And does anybody have any thoughts on where Keith, the bodyguard, is? If we're going to dispute whether there was an interlude with Stormy Daniels, one side, whichever the one is, whichever one is telling the truth, should want Keith to get on the witness stand and say she I was outside of his door every night. She never, never came there. Or I remember she went in. I don't want to be here and turn on Mr. Trump. But yeah, she definitely was there. Go ahead, Andy. On Weisselberg, he's not testifying because Bragg won't immunize him. He's got a live Fifth Amendment privilege. And if he testifies favorably towards Trump, what Bragg has demonstrated is that while he's not particularly interested in prosecuting actual

crime in New York, which is a pretty significant problem, he's very interested in prosecuting Allen Weisselberg. He does it more often than I go on vacation. So, you know, that's why. And I actually think this is one of the more underhanded things I've seen in a long time, because it's obvious that if you're the jury, you'd be sitting there saying, where is Weisselberg? And what Bragg tried to do last week was get in to evidence the severance agreement between Trump and Weisselberg. Weisselberg gets $2 million, but there's all kinds of provisions in the agreement that prevent him from speaking publicly or contributing to investigations and other stuff against Trump. And what Bragg is trying to do is suggest that the one keeping Weisselberg off the stand is Trump because he's got this severance agreement that he can hold over him. In the meantime, the severance agreement has an explicit term that says if you get subpoenaed or if you get called by

a court of competent jurisdiction to come in and testify, yes, you can come in and testify. That's you know, the agreement doesn't actually have to say that to be true, but it is. Yeah, that's right. So so what what Trump what Bragg is trying to do is say trump is the guy keeping him off the stand in the meantime the guy keeping him off the stand is brag all he's got to do is give him immunity and then he could bring him in to testify and if he would say a version of events that was helpful to brag's case that's exactly what brag would do but the only guy who's got power to give him immunity is brag no one else in the equation has that power. Any thoughts on the bodyguard? Why wouldn't they call the bodyguard? I guess I don't know enough about that because I, and maybe this is just me because I have like

this conceit about this whole thing and I just can't get past myself. But I just think the Stormy thing is so out of place in this case. I mean, that testimony, I even think the judge regrets having Cohen got paid and what the documents say and how the documents were prepared. It's really far afield from that. And I think the Trump people have made enough in the way of a mess for themselves by fighting things that they shouldn't be fighting. I don't understand why the state cluttered up their case with that other than to dirty up Trump. I don't see any other good reason for it. Maybe they didn't feel like they needed him, Dave.

Yeah. And Megan, this is another self-inflicted wound by Todd Blanch's opening statement. He made it a point to say that the sex never happened. And so that opened the door for Stormy Daniels to bring out all this salacious stuff that otherwise she would never have been able to talk about. So that was another miscue, I think, unless the defense can use that on appeal to overturn the case because that stuff was so prejudicial. So maybe there's a strategy in it after all. OK, let's talk about what could happen after this, because we had Mark Garagos and Marsha Clark on the program yesterday, and we had a brief discussion

about what would happen if Trump were convicted. Would he be remanded? I mean, would he be put in cuffs immediately? Would he be taken? Would he be remanded to jail pending the filing of an appeal, et cetera? And could he potentially, as you know, could something as extreme happen, Dave, where he could be wearing an ankle bracelet during the first presidential debate later in June? I don't think so, Megan. A judge understands the moment he's in. And I think that if Trump is found guilty

after the sentencing won't take place right away, he will not be remanded. He'll be allowed to go about his business. And then when he gets sentenced, I think it's more likely than not he gets just probation. And if he does get anything more than probation, yeah, he could get some house arrest. But remember, Trump is going to appeal that immediately. So he won't have any sanction, I think, until after well after the election. Both Garagos and Marsha Clark, who are legit trial attorneys, as you know, said he'll probably get jail time at any. Well, there was some question about whether or not that any other defendant would get jail time for these 34 felonies, even without a prior record. Is that crazy talk, Dave? I think it's true that other defendants could get jail time, 34 counts, even with no prior record,

they could, but most of them seem to get probation for this. Donald Trump, though, I do not believe he'll get jail time. I don't know how you put him in jail with Secret Service for this. I think, yeah, he could get some level of house arrest with an ankle bracelet at some point, but this is going to be on appeal for some time. And I just don't see him wearing an orange jumpsuit or steel bracelets ever in this case. Marsha had questions about jail time. He was, he was saying, who are your experts? I was like, what do you, I got the best experts in law coming on this show. And he was the first one who really pushed the idea that he was going to go to jail for this. If he gets convicted of the 34, go ahead, Andy. Uh, I, I looked at the stats the other day. I did a little post on national review for this if he gets convicted of the 34. Go ahead, Andy. I looked at the stats the other day.

I did a little post on National Review for this. In 2022, which is the last year they have full records, there were 156,000 arrests in New York City, of which 72,000 were felony arrests. And of those, almost 30,000 were violent felony arrests. You know how many people got prison sentences in 2022? Four thousand three hundred and fifty. Out of 156. Well, no, but my point is, my point is, it's really hard to you. What does Heather McDonald say that like prison is like the Lifetime Achievement Award for criminals? It's really hard to – what does Heather McDonald say? That prison is like the Lifetime Achievement Award for criminals? It's really hard to get sentenced to prison in New York. And the other thing – Dave may know more about this than I do, but I'm pretty sure – I was not a state practitioner in New York.

I only did the federal stuff. My understanding is with certain categories of nonviolent crime and this, even though it's a felony, would be considered a nonviolent crime that once he files a notice of appeal, he's out until the appeal is decided. So I don't see I is there prison in his future if he gets convicted here? It's possible. But I think he could string this out till 2025. And once he's if he wins the election and I'm never I've never been one who thought I still think Biden's the favorite to win the election. But if he wins the election, I would think under the supremacy clause, they would argue that he shouldn't face a sentence until after he's out of office. So I think it's a long way from that. So you don't see him in an ankle bracelet or, God forbid, behind bars. Can you imagine that debate?

Hold on. Hold on. Just doing cell check. I'm going to answer that right after they deliver my meal. Right, right. That's insane. Here's Dave Yuga on MSNBC. Here's Lawrence O'Donnell with some thoughts on the upcoming debate and why he's not happy about them. It's hot 25. There will be a nominee

in the debate facing at least three indictments who will already have been convicted or found not guilty in an earlier trial happening now in New York City. If there is a hung jury in the Manhattan trial and the district attorney announces that he is going to pursue a retrial of Donald Trump on those same charges, then Joe Biden won't be able to talk about that case either. A so-called debate that was already going to be ridiculous is going to be even more preposterous. It will be the theater of the absurd. Joe Biden won't just have one hand tied behind his back. He will be put in a legal straitjacket. And the unfair benefit to Donald Trump is enormous. Joe Biden is a good lawyer who could rip up Donald Trump in a debate just talking about the criminal indictments against Donald Trump alone. Do you agree with that, Dave, that he won't be able, Biden won't be able to raise any of the criminal indictments at the debate? I don't see why he can't raise them. I mean, he can talk about state cases. I understand why he may not want to talk about federal cases that his own Department of Justice

is pursuing. He can talk about them generally, though, say, hey, you're the one who's been indicted four times. He can say stuff like that. But there's nothing to stop him from talking about a state case, even a state case that ended in a home jury and still has to be tried again. So, no, I have to disagree with him on that. I don't know what authority he's citing that would say that Joe Biden can't talk about those things. I agree with you. I was I wondered if silly me. I wondered if he knew something I didn't. I should have known better. Do you have any thoughts on that, Andy, whether Joe Biden will be somehow prohibited from commenting? I mean, I feel like he will definitely comment on at least the New York state case, especially if there's been a

conviction. Yeah, I think Trump, when he was president, would get himself in trouble by doing things like recommending that somebody get severe jail time. But in prosecutors offices, which which is the executive branch. And I was I was a Rudy Giuliani assistant. So there was a fair amount of concern about how the media was going to report on our cases. But a lot of thought went into what you put in charging documents so that so that as long as it's on the public record, you're allowed to talk about it. So I don't see why he wouldn't. The attorney general or the prosecutor on the case could speak publicly about what's on the public record. So I don't see why he shouldn't. The other reason, though, I think the debate will be hilarious, and maybe we'll talk about this some other time,

is if things go the way they're now scheduled to go. Hunter Biden's got a trial on. Is it June 3rd? June 3rd gun case. And then June 20th is the tax case. I mean, I don't know what they're going to. Will they ever get around to talking about inflation or Israel? I mean, we're going to be talking. It'll be like us three talking about talking about the trials. That's exactly talking about whether it was a reimbursement or not, just like completely off point. I got to ask you this last thing. So yesterday I mentioned this to our panel. And what we were told by a source close to the J6 federal case is that there's an expectation that this is what the prosecution is going to do, Jack Smith.

That the Supreme Court is going to rule on whether Trump has absolute or partial immunity. They're also going to rule on that J6 obstruction case that doesn't involve Trump but could gut one of the main claims against him. And something will probably be left of Jack Smith's case. The odds of it going away completely because Trump's completely immune for all very, very slim. So something will be left. That's worst case scenario for the prosecutor. Best case is everything's left. Then they kick it back down to Judge Chutkin and they say, you figure out, you know, potentially which of the behaviors alleged took place as in his role as president and which of the behaviors alleged took place in his role as candidate Trump, not working for the American people, but working for himself because that latter group would not be immunized. That's that's an expected ruling could could go differently. But let's say that's what happens.

They expect Jack Smith and Tanya Chutkin, the judge, to pedal down to the metal on trying the case. This Supreme Court ruling would come out in June, presumably, and then we move forward to maybe July, maybe as soon as August, that she actually tries the case. It's going to take a long time. It's not going to be a fast case. And there's a belief we won't get it tried before the November election. I share in that belief. But they do think it could get tried before January 6th. So Trump could potentially win the presidency in November while he's on trial in that D.C. courtroom. The DOJ rule of we don't prosecute within a certain window doesn't apply. They've already said we charged him well before

that window. So it's on their their full steam ahead. He gets elected president. He gets convicted in the J6 federal court. And then the Democrats turn it into a battle in Congress not to accept the vote, the certification. The count will have happened in December, and then the certification would be J6, like it was the last time. And they will make the case he's a convicted felon in a federal court over, you know, obstruction or whatever counts are left. You can't certify this vote and that it's going to turn ultimately into a political battle again. How do you like that theory? And could it actually play out like that, Dave? I do think that if the Supreme Court greenlights the case that Judge Shutkin and Jack Smith are going to go pedal to the metal. I do agree with that. But I think that we're thinking so many steps ahead

about how the Democrats will react if it happens right before he takes office. That's a lot. My head is spinning on so many hypotheticals. But I do agree with the fact that if this case can be tried before the November election, that it will be. I don't think that they're going to move to try it after the election. If Trump gets elected in November, I don't think that Judge Chuck and Jack Smith are going to set this case for November 20th of December. What if it's mid-trial when he gets elected? Yeah, they'd have to actually recess the trial for a week for the election, perhaps, I guess. Well, I don't know that answer, Megan, but I do think that.

Because Dave, he wouldn't yet be president. So he couldn't pull the DOJ off the case. He would be president elect. He can't pull the DOJ off the case until he's sworn in. I think that the way that they'll do it is if they think they can complete the trial before the election, they'll go ahead with it. I think if they think the trial would take place and continue till after the election, then I don't think they set it for trial. I don't think Judge Shutkin would go that far. I totally disagree with you. I think she'll

do what she needs to do to get him. But you go ahead, Andy. Yeah, I think there's a missing piece in the hypothetical. So I think the smart money is that the Supreme Court is apt to remand the case to Judge Chutkin with some guidance about distinguishing official acts from private acts. And then tell her to work out which is which, because you may have to take some evidence on that. So the case, let's say the case gets remanded that way. Here's the quandary for Jack Smith. I thought listening to the argument, and I confirmed this rereading the transcript of it, I thought that Sauer, the lawyer for Trump, gave a lot of ground. He did. And especially in the answers to the questions by Justice Barrett and Justice Kagan.

And what falls into private conduct. Right. And like, for example, the fake electors scheme is private conduct. The the allegation that he has that verification document in the litigation in Atlanta that has a false statement in it, they admit that that's private conduct. Now, here's the thing. This would require a concession from Smith that based on the way he's tried the case in Florida, I don't know if he has it in him. But I could see a prosecutor going to Judge Chutkin and say, you know what, Judge? Forget about going through the indictment and parsing it out.

We're ready to go to trial on just the stuff that they said was private. And I'll leave the rest of my case, though i want it on the on the cutting room floor now the reason i say i don't think smith has it in him is i really thought in florida if he wanted to get to trial he should have made that a fast and nasty obstruction case and not don't do the three dozen right uh classified information counts to get you into two years of steeple litigation. You don't need that. If you want to get the guy to trial, he's got like 40 or 50 years of exposure on the six or eight counts of obstruction. He could have gotten that case to trial, but he wants the whole case. So it's in this limbo. And if he acts like that in Washington, then I think all bets are off because you'll never get to those

scenarios you talked about, Megan, because if if they send the case back to Chutkin for her to do this exercise and go through it, then it's still a pending immunity case, a immunity issue which is appealable. So she'll make her ruling and then Trump will appeal to the D.C. circuit. OK, OK, I agree. I agree. But but you take it from here, Andy. I agree. But then the Court of Appeals will take it. D.C. Court of Appeals will take it. And there are I don't know, let's just say they rule for her like they did the last time on immunity. Who's to say the Supreme Court's going to take that appeal up and get down into the granular, you know, OK, this is private. No, this is presidential. Wouldn't they in that circumstance be more likely to say that one we're not taking? We defer to the trial court and to the court of appeals. That's making the problem.

Yeah. But the problem is in in federal law, I don't know if it's the same way. And I think it's the same way in most jurisdictions. You're only in front of one court at a time. As long as the immunity is a live issue, she's not going to be able to do all. She's got like three months of work to do to get this case to trial because there's major pretrial motions that haven't been decided. There's also going to be an attack on Smith's status as a special counsel, which they're going to litigate down in Florida as well. I don't see how there's enough time unless Smith just says, I'm willing to live with the case as sour conceded it was in the Supreme Court in terms of the

private activity. Let's go to trial on the fake electors and the false statement, then I think you could get to trial. But if you if you don't do that, then it's still an immunity issue that's appealable. And once the D.C. circuit takes it, even if they only take a month, that's a month that Chuck can can't do anything on the case. I just don't think there's enough time to get it to trial. Dave, do you think there's any chance Jack Smith will winnow the J6 case down, as Andy just outlined, or potentially the Mar-a-Lago case? That's where you are. Because he understands if Trump wins this election, both of those cases are going away entirely. So if there ever were a time to take half a loaf, he might be thinking this is it. I agree with Andy on the January 6th case. I do think the election

interference case in D.C. can be narrowed and expedited, not the Mar-a-Lago documents case. I think Jack Smith is resigned to the fact that with Judge Cannon, he's not going to have this happen before the election, no matter what he tries to do. And as Andy said, if Jack Smith really were about just gaming the system, he could have filed the Mar-a-Lago Doctrine's case in Washington, D.C. in a better form. And not only did he file it in the Southern District of Florida, but he actually asked for the West Palm Beach Division, which allowed Judge Cannon to be the more likely judge assigned to this case. So Jack Smith, I think, just believes in the system. He's going to move ahead. But I do think that if he has a chance to expedite the January 6th trial because of

everything that's been going on, yeah, I think he does that. And Judge Hutkin would go along. All right. I got to get Andy to give the last word. Jack Smith just believes in the system. He's a Boy Scout. He's just Joe Friday in there trying to do his best for the American people. Do you believe that? Well, let me put it this way. Mike Draben got up in front of Mike Draben, who is Smith's lawyer, right, got up in front of the Supreme Court being asked questions by Justice Alito and said, you don't have to worry about politicized prosecutions because we don't do something like that. After all, prosecutors take an oath. And we have to go through the grand jury to get charges filed. And we have all kinds of internal controls in the Justice Department to make sure that sort of thing doesn't happen. While Drieben was looking the court in the eye

and making that argument, if you looked over at the table for the other party in the case, what you didn't see was the defendant who was entitled to be present, but who wasn't present because he's up in a political prosecution in New York and he can't be present at the trial. brought his indictments under circumstances where the cases had to come to fruition in the months leading up to the election, even though there's Justice Department guidance that says we're never, ever supposed to take election dates into account. This was all strategically done. And this idea that the public has an interest in a speedy trial that trumps the interest, pardon the pun, of a defendant who has been prosecuted not by one, but by four different prosecutors, including Smith twice. is where any one of these cases would be a full time job to get ready for. And they want to do all four of them and they want to do it before Election Day. And then they want to tell you his due process rights haven't been have been completely upheld and respected. And then they want to look you in the eye and say, we're just about the system. We're just upright guys. We don't care

if it's Trump or, you know, Joe Schmoe off the street. We treat them all the same. Really? I don't think so. Same. It's like going down in an airplane, a la the one they showed in Lost, crashing and burning and Boeing being like, we checked all the safety boxes. We follow protocols. Fear not. Who would ever who would ever cut corners and see a plane go down? That was how the Supreme Court argument felt to me on when Jack Smith's lawyer said that. OK, sure, Jan. Sure. Guys, you're great. Thanks. I'm sorry I stole so much extra of your time, but as usual, a stellar discussion. Thank you both. Thanks so much. And we will be back tomorrow with our pal Dan Bongino. Oh, we've got so many good things to talk to Dan about.

I know you're going to love it. Please tune in. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.