The Young Turks - TYT Reacts to Trump's Post-Arraignment Speech

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

Ana Kasparian and John Iadarola discuss Trump's speech after getting arraigned in NYC on The Young Turks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. China. Welcome to the true members only portion of this Trump press conference coverage. So John and I are going to tighten it up and give our analysis of that weird flailing speech that Trump gave today. So, few things I want to mention. Now that Donald Trump has been arraigned and is facing 34 counts of felony charges having

to do with falsifying records, or 45 counts I should say, of falsifying documents. He's given a press conference and a speech in response to it, except not really. The speech was all over the place. It wasn't as lengthy as I expected it to be, which I'm grateful for. But there was really no core focus of the speech, which makes me believe that the whole point was to fundraise, crowd funds some more money, possibly for his legal defense, but more importantly, for his campaign, because he's still running for president in 2024. And while he could have also used this as an opportunity to hit Ron DeSantis, which is something

that John Iderola mentioned earlier, he didn't take that opportunity. Instead, what did he do, John? He just reminded us of all of the criminal investigations that he's currently facing and civil investigations that he's currently facing. Right. And it's a lot. And it's a lot. So he started the speech by talking about his election denialism because he can't help himself.

So more nonsense about the election being stolen and widespread fraud that he failed to prove in dozens and dozens of cases. Then he moved on to the various investigations he's facing. Which I thought was the only interesting part of this speech because he's kind of telling on himself. I think after getting a rain today, he's genuinely concerned that he will be criminally charged in other cases. Yeah.

So let's talk about the other cases real quick. There's the investigation into Trump taking home top secret and classified documents, then lying about it multiple times. In fact, he lied so much in that situation that his lawyers were uninformed about what the reality is. And his lawyers ended up lying to the FBI about what Trump had in his possession. So that, I would argue, is even more serious than the case being brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg having to do with the hush money payments. So him mentioning that and talking about that, referring to it as the box hoax. Boxes hoax, as he said, he's telling on himself in that I believe that he's genuinely concerned

and a little panicky about what the future holds. Yeah. So if we're trying to do an analysis of like trying to read between the lines of his body language speech and what he focused on to see how he's feeling or whatever, first of all, it's tough because he has been flying all over the place and he's like a thousand years old. So if he's appearing tired and run down, it's understandable. I get off a flight, I don't want to give a speech. But if the goal was, and we had heard in anticipation of today that this is what he was going to do, is that he's going to project strength.

He's going to seem to be relishing it, flashing that winning smile and all that. I didn't get any of that from him. None, zero. He seems under siege. And I get that he does want people to see him that way because the right wing loves being a victim. and they've created this weird, like, flipped reality where the more he's investigated, the better it is for him, which is where generally I like politicians who are not being investigated for corruption in a variety of other crimes.

But that's not the way they work. But it wasn't strength, it wasn't, you know, here's how we're going to fight back and here's all we're going to do, even to the extent that it's being used as an opportunity to raise money, which I do think that that's what he's doing. And there's certainly going to be blasting out emails and texting all that. He mentioned that they have had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars, I guess. But I don't know that he did a direct call to action, a direct appeal, like head to trumpbucks.com and donate or anything. Did he even do that?

His podium literally had text Trump at and then it had a number. But no, you guys. Which really fast. He's not explicitly donating. But if you do that, just throw your phone away because all it's good for from then on is receiving donation requests. He's already fundraising off of this. So today was his arraignment, and today was the day that his campaign blasted out this email, urging his supporters to spend just $45 or more to get this lovely Donald Trump mugshot t-shirt.

So he's already fundraising off of it. I mean, it says not guilty, but as someone who's running for president again, Do you really want to sell t-shirts featuring a mugshot? And by the way, this is not the mugshot that was taken during his arraignment. I don't believe when it was taken. Oh, really? Okay, I didn't know for sure. Yeah, I don't believe it was. All right.

So it's just some random picture that they used for the imagery for the shirt. It's also the only photo certified by Donald Trump it says on there. What does that mean? I don't know. I've sold other photos that was not certified. So make it seem more special than it is. Like, ooh, I got the shirt that has the only photo certified. by Donald Trump.

They look, the reason they're selling the shirt is every single right winger is desperate at all times to be cool. And they can't be, that's why they're right wingers. But they desperately want Trump to be cool. They want being in Maga to be cool, and it's not in any way. They're literally the people trying to out law porn, how cool do you think they're gonna be. But they've been saying in the lead up to all this, he's gonna be Tupac, he's gonna be, you know, Mandela, he's gonna be Frank Sinatra.

They desperately want that lame photo that you just saw to be cool. And it's not, there are gonna be some people who buy it. Yeah. The most annoying guy in your poly side class will be wearing that t-shirt. But aside from that, I don't think it's gonna get much like pop culture pickup. Now the one other thing that stood out to me about his speech, it was brief. I'm pretty sure his lawyers advised him to avoid attacking the judge presiding over this process. And that judge, by the, by the way, is Judge Juan Marshawn.

He presided over the trial involving Alan Weisselberg, who was the chief financial officer of the Trump organization. Anyway, there was only one brief moment where he decided to go after him, the judge, and his family, alleging that his children are supportive of Trump's political opponent. So this is just a political hit job, it's, you know, a hatchet job. You just don't commit the crimes. You committed the crimes. That's why you're being prosecuted.

It's that simple. You want to know why the Manhattan District Attorney isn't prosecuting me for falsifying documents and paying hush money payments in violation of campaign finance laws? Because I didn't do any of that. Okay, so it's that simple. It's taking ownership of what you did wrong. And it didn't need to get to this point. But it's Donald Trump.

He thinks that he's invincible. And by the way, so far when it comes to criminal prosecution, he has been invincible. So he's probably super shaken than Alvin Bragg. And honestly, I didn't expect Alvin Bragg to actually pursue criminal charges against Trump. But he did it. Yeah. If it surprised me, imagine how it made Trump feel knowing that he's lived his entire life as if he's above the law.

Yeah. So. Yeah, definitely. So I think it's easy to read into quite a few of the little characteristics of this that He's feeling a little bit desperate. I sometimes will gauge how under the gun he feels by how dark he goes with the face paint. And I think he went to the level where like you wouldn't want a photo of that to come up like from the 70s in a yearbook. He, it's a hate crime what you just saw.

But um, yeah, and God, he brought up on the right wing. Yeah, go ahead. On the right, like they have, they love to pretend that they care about like this sense of like personal responsibility. It's not even like Donald Trump is finally being investigated for massive financial crimes that an outsider could be like, well, that's wrong, but I get it. You want that billion dollars he stole or something. These are all things that he could have just not done. He could have just not stolen the documents.

And he probably sort of won, he probably would have won anyway, right? So the documents, he didn't need to steal them. There's no benefit to steal him, why steal them? All the sexual assaults goes without saying, you could not do that. people could just not do that. That would be great. The calling Fulton County, dude, you already lost. It wasn't going to change it. Why did you do this to yourself? The call with Ukraine was based on his fear of having an honest election against Joe Biden. So he wanted to have this sham investigation. No. Perfect. Nobody had a problem with it. No quid pro quo. His underbite reminds

me of a, we have a very adorable multi-poo in our family, okay, and extended family. And the multi-pooh also has an underbite. And every time Trump talks, I think about the multi-pooh. Anyway, that's a side note. That's totally irrelevant to the story. But yeah, no, I mean, you're so right. But the reason why, look, this is the other thing that I think is important to keep in mind when it comes to prosecuting politicians. people in positions of power, the elite, right? Because some people keep making the argument, oh, it sets a bad precedent. No, I would argue it sets a bad precedent when you don't hold people in positions of power

accountable for their criminality. Yep. Because it signals to all the other politicians, all the other future presidential, you know, the administrations, executive branches, that they can enjoy impunity. Which is why I feel like the crimes that end up getting committed. by members of the executive branch get more and more extreme. Don't you feel that way? Yeah, I mean look, I would say that other than I guess the coup,

most of the things he's being investigated for, I would say are less extreme than many of the things presidents do that they should by all rights be investigated for. Like war crimes. Yes, I agree with you on that, yes. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, but my point is, I mean, if Trump doesn't face any consequences for what he did,

did after losing the 2020 election, right? What he did in trying to, he literally called election officials in Georgia and told them, find me the votes, but just make up votes. So I win the state of Georgia, even though he knew that he had not won the state of Georgia. Yeah. That is serious. And if the response to that is, ah, just let it go, well, then what's gonna stop a different presidential candidate in the future from doing something even more extreme in an attempt to steal the election that they did not win.

Well, he's planning to, but the reason that they've tried to take over so many county boards of officials and secretaries of state in different states is so they can do a more extreme version of it in 2024. And to your point, which I think you presented almost as a hypothetical about, you know, when you don't investigate, it leads to more criminality. Like think about impeachment hoax number one over Ukraine. He was scared to have an honest election against Joe Biden. So he tried to set up a sham investigation of Joe Biden by the Ukrainian government and all that. Because he was not removed from office, he was not stopped in any way as a result of that.

What did we end up having? The Fulton County stuff eventually happened. The coup eventually happened. All the other election-related criminality would not have happened if the first time he tried to basically change the result of an election by setting up a sham investigation by blackmailing an ally, again, this is not a hypothetical. We have already seen this in practice. All of the sexual assaults and sexual harassment,

that he's gotten away with, if he'd gotten, like actually gotten in trouble for the first one, then we would not have had dozens of other women have to have their lives ruined by their interactions with him. Yeah, and look, the takeaway for me is he seemed scared. He's trying his best to hide it. There was a lot of low energy, low energy Trump, low energy Trump. And I don't blame him because he's probably drained from the experience he had getting arrested. arraigned. So we'll see how it plays out. But the one final thing I want to bring up is I like how Hunter Biden's laptop is like the go to squirrel by Republicans, right? Okay, look, just publish the entire laptop already. Just do it. Just do it. Because here's the thing,

they've had the laptop for how many years now. And if there was actual criminality, evidence of criminality in that laptop, we would have all known about it by now. Why is it that we haven't heard a damn thing about Hunter Biden actually breaking laws. I just, and by the way, if he breaks laws, great, prosecute him. I don't care. I don't care. Honestly, I would prefer that you just lock him up now so that I don't have to hear about it anymore. It's so ridiculous that that is the squirrel of choice for Republicans. When in reality, most everybody, I would even venture to say like MSNBC liberals don't care, let's just move on. Okay, and if there is criminality there, if there's evidence

of criminality in that laptop, then prosecute and let's move on. That's it. But using that as a deflection is so pathetic and so weak. And that's how Trump looked during that speech. He looked weak. He did, he did. The only other thing I would want to at least put a button in because I think that it could become relevant going forward.

Put that button in. I'm gonna put it right in there, is the mention of the judge in the judge's family. Because I know he was told, do not talk about these, just two people. You can attack anyone else, you can attack all the racist and reverse investigators, just don't talk about Alvin Bragg right now because making threats against prosecutors, bad thing and the judge. And he keeps doing it. Yep. And this is on the day of the arraignment, like by tomorrow and the next day and the next day, we have months now as we move towards this. He's going to be on true social. He just wants to attack. He wants to

talk about like chaos and death and destruction and facial obliteration and all that stuff. He desperately wants it. But if he does it in this case, there's actually potentially serious consequences. There could be a gag order. If he violates that, he could be potentially held in pre-trial detention. What's going on? No, no, I'm sorry for it. I don't mean to distract you, but like, I think we've been pretty accurate in describing

Trump's energy levels during that speech. Jack Poseyke, I don't know if that's how you pronounce his last name. I don't care. I don't respect the guy. America has never seen a speech like this before. Literally, he tweeted that. America has seen that exact speech dozens of times from him. Yes, here's another one.

Trump is hitting energy levels like we've never seen. This is beyond 2016. This is something else completely. Man, they just are so desperate to have a hero. They, you know how like they can't draw? Is that coping and seething? Is that what that is? That is just coping.

You know how like they can't draw Trump without giving him abs? It's this weird like mental tick where they have to give him abs. It's because they want him to have abs. And they want him to have that strength. They want a strong man. They want to have a big strong man put his boot on their head and push it into the mud. That is what every bit of them to the deepest parts of their body and their soul want. And they just wish that Trump was that guy.

And he's not that guy. He's a two bit con man. He's a low energy, two bit con man. That's what he is. He's not always low energy, we gotta be fair, but that speech, definitely low energy. He's getting lower energy. And there was some weird speech stuff where he was having trouble with words. That's not particularly new, that's happened before, but it was multiple times in one speech.

You've never seen a speech like that before. I've never seen a guy try to speech and then fail like that before. Well, sorry about the reality, Jack. Truth hurts, but it is the truth. Yeah. John, you're the best. I've heard that, that is the truth. Excellent haircut.

Thank you, thank you. No, come on, everyone's loving your haircut. I'm gonna read a few comments, I have to. Let me see, let me see. Brett Ehrlich says. Wait, I recognize that name. Oh my god, OMG, John looks so good. Which by the way, I think I literally texted that to someone.

Because you do, you look great. And Holly Beer Dragon says, or Holy Beer Dragon says, I would love to see Anna do karaoke. It would be hilarious. It is hilarious because I can't sing. We should do, I have done some karaoke. We should do karaoke sometimes. We should, that'd be fun.

Let's do it. Brett's a good, I've only gone karaokeing with Brett and Brooke once years ago. And it was really fun, so they should come. Sounds good, so make it happen. Anyway, thanks for watching everybody. Make sure you check out damage report. I'm sure there will be new updates by tomorrow morning. Big news Wednesday, we're Jerry Jackson tomorrow.

See, 10 a.m. Pacific. P.m. Eastern damage report. Make sure you check it out. Have a great night. We love you guys. And bye, bye, bye. ad free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcasts at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank huger and i'll see you soon