The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - How Will Donald Trump's New Indictment(s) Impact the Election? || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: June 13, 2023

If reading the headlines gave you some major déjà vu...welcome to the club. Trump is getting hit with a series of new indictments, but will it impact the election? Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/how-will-donald-trumps-new-indictments-impact-the-election

Everybody, Peter Zine here coming to you from the world's best Fourth of July fireworks overlook. That's the Denver skyline there behind me. Today we're going to talk about all of the new indictments of Donald Trump. A lot of people have written in asking what sort of impact this is going to have on the election, and the short answer is not a bit. Just to give you a quick review of how I see things going. Donald Trump is so solid with his base that he's going to get the nomination. There's no way around that.

And Joe Biden has been, what's the best way to put this? Independence have thrown in for the Democrats. The independents think that the Democratic positions in the administration are really hurting them economically, but they're so opposed to what the Maga Republicans want to do with the general election because it would gut their ability to have any influence on the country at all. So their hearts are definitely against the Democrats, but they're voting for them in number. And in that sort of situation, you've got 10% of the population who are the swing voters who all of a sudden are not, and that means we might even see Biden win places like Texas that only lost by a few

percentage points last time around. It's going to be a wipeout. Anyway, this isn't going to change that. The indictments are not going to change that. First of all, there's many coming. We've got the espionage ones related to the documents. The issue that is different here between what Trump did and what everybody else who seems to be leaking these documents did is number one, most of these are top tier security, national security issues. Number two, they were unsecured. Number three, Trump was actually sharing with them with people. So, you know, I'm no national security. lawyer but that strikes me as a fairly open and shut case which is why we're seeing so many counts in this moving so quickly. Second, Eastman, what's, what was his first name? Can't remember.

Anyway, he was one of Trump's lawyers back during the January 6th stuff and he's the guy who came up with the legal theories that have been proven wildly inaccurate in order to overturn the election. He is now in the process of getting disbarred and if you look at the list of people who are testifying as part of that, there are people who were all close to the administration who haven't spoken yet. So there's probably some interesting bombshells, especially from Eastman himself, that are going to throw some more indictments Trump's way. But that doesn't really matter. You can run for president from prison.

There's an open question about if you win what happens. Let's just say that these security issues would be complicated. But that doesn't matter for Trump's base. Maga Republicans assume that anything that reflects badly on Trump is a plot, or maybe even something to boast about. And Trump is now at the point where he's so ensconced as a leader of a cult of personality that he could live stream the abortion of his trans lover and he would still get the nomination. Remember in the Republican system first past the post wins you need one more vote than the other guy

and as soon as we had four people in the race with him that meant that he couldn't lose and now we've got like eight or nine In fact, the Pence declaring for president of former vice president Mike Pence seals the deal because it means that if you're an evangelical and you want to take a moral stance, you know, you'll vote for Pence. That's only going to be a few single digit of percentages, which means that the MAGA vote is going to be that much more potent for Trump. We're in a position now where if he gets 20% of the votes, he's automatically the nomination and he's probably going to get twice that.

So that doesn't change at all. And then on the other end, it doesn't change. all because if you have a somebody in our indictment or god forbid or convicted felon running for president that is going to sour for all moderates in the country not to mention everyone who normally would try to stay on the sad lines so we were already looking at a pretty big washout of trump versus Biden round two this just makes it that much more extreme now of course this is all dependent upon two things number one Joe Biden has to live until the election not a non-risk and number two Donald Trump has to live until the election. People like to point out that if Biden wins, he'll be the

oldest president we've ever had, and that is true. But if Trump wins, he will be the oldest elected president we've ever had. So, you know, we're not exactly choosing between some spring chickens here. All right, that's it for me. You guys take care.