Today, Explained - MAGAlomaniac

Episode Date: November 16, 2020

A weekend of protests, violence, and enmity in DC revealed what Donald Trump has planned post-presidency. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramos for him. On Saturday, November 7th, the District of Columbia, where I live, was in rare form. After months of quarantining and locking down, followed by months of protests, proclaiming Black Lives Matter, stores being boarded up, followed by months of election anxiety and a second round of stores being boarded up, followed by months of election anxiety and a second round of stores being boarded up.

People were out in the streets celebrating, honking, popping champagne. Crowds of people were singing and dancing. The news of Joe Biden's victory flipped the switch in D.C. The city hadn't seemed so happy and alive since I don't even remember when. One week later, on Saturday, November 14th, thousands of people hit the streets of D.C. again. But this time it wasn't so much the locals and it was to protest Joe Biden's victory. And as could have been predicted by just about anybody, it didn't take long for things to turn very, very ugly. Overnight, fireworks exploding in the streets of D.C. as businesses prepared for the worst.

In Black Lives Matter Plaza, pro-Trump demonstrators tearing down signs, multiple fights breaking out over the course of the night, police breaking them up using tear gas. Debbie Trung was in the streets for WAMU, public radio in D.C. So I was stationed right by the Supreme Court at the front of the rally. And so I saw thousands of people flooding up Constitution Avenue for several hours. Welcome to D.C. From the Trump-supporting side, it really ran the spectrum, right? So there were, you know, far-right extremist groups,

including the Proud Boys who were down there. There were several speakers planned. Sebastian Gorka spoke. But I also saw a lot of families, including young children. I also saw some older couples. You know, I talked saw a lot of families, including young children. I also saw some older couples. You know, I talked with a few people who attended the rally. They were from all over the country. I talked with someone from Texas who basically said that he doesn't trust the media and that he decided to come down to D.C. to see for himself what was really going on.

The American people are tired of being lied to. They're tired of everybody telling what they need to believe in. And I think that we need to take their country back. You know, they all pretty resoundingly believed that the election was stolen and there was widespread fraud. Stop this deal! Stop this deal! Stop this deal! You know, there were chanting in the streets. People were saying things like, four more years. I saw signs that said, count every legal vote. There was a lot of parroting of President Trump's message

that this election was stolen, even though there is no evidence of such. President Trump, by every metric, won this election. And that's why the corporate media, that's why the corporate media, including Fox News, will not let anybody on to show the proven fraud in Pennsylvania, in Michigan, in Arizona, in Georgia, in Nevada, and in Minnesota.

Did you have any sense as you were out there talking to people, watching the protests, that this could all turn violent? From where I was standing, there were about a couple hundred, I would say, counter-demonstrators who were also next to the Supreme Court, a line of U.S. Capitol police were separating the counter-demonstrators from the Trump supporters. I saw a couple of Trump supporters get in the face of some Capitol police and looked like they were trying to cross the police line and get into a confrontation with some of police and looked like they were trying to cross the police line and get into a confrontation with some of the counter-demonstrators.

There were some clashes during the day between Trump supporters and counter-demonstrators, but during the day at least, it seemed like D.C. police had those under control or did a decent job of separating people. That took a turn later in the evening when things got more violent. So, you know, right after the protests and the rally ended around 5 p.m., things were a little bit quieter.

I would say around 6, 7 o'clock, that's when, you know, things started building and you saw these violent clashes between two sides. Put that shit away. Hey, blame, blame, blame, blame, blame, blame. I think that, you know, there was just a lot of animosity between Trump supporters and counter-demonstrators. A lot of the counter-demonstrators were Black Lives Matter supporters who maybe showed up over the summer to protest police brutality and things like that. And you have Trump supporters who are saying things like Blue Lives Matter. You know, one person was stabbed and hospitalized.

Overall, there were 20 arrests, according to the mayor's office, and at least seven guns were recovered. And I think that's when you really saw police struggle to get a handle on some of the violence. I returned downtown after the stabbing, and at that point, things had mostly simmered down, although there were still probably a few hundred Trump supporters in the street, you know, still chanting and shouting. At that point, they were trailed by D.C. police. And I also saw a line of police in riot gear on hand to protect from any further violence. Earlier in the day, President Trump seemed to really enjoy the outpouring of support he was getting. He even drove through some of the protests in his motorcade downtown.

How'd the president respond to what happened in D.C., especially as things turned dark, literally and figuratively? I saw not too long ago that he tweeted something to the effect of, I won the election. And so there's been a lot of that continued messaging. Since Saturday, he's still spreading these unproven claims of a stolen election. He's dramatically overinflated the size of the crowd. I think he was saying there were millions of people there. There were thousands of people there. There were thousands of people there. I haven't gotten the impression that he's tried to calm any of the tensions that came out of Saturday night. Debbie Trung, she's with WAMU in Washington.

You can find and support her work at WAMU.org. Saturday's clashes in D.C. were a bad look for the country, but it looks like it was exactly what President Trump wanted to see. What he's cooking up for his next chapter after a quick break. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family, and Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos

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to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. CNN projects Joseph R. Biden Jr. is elected the 46th president of the United States, winning the White House and denying President Trump a second term. Anita Kumar, White House correspondent for Politico. The president knows he lost, right? I think the president knows he lost. People have told him he's lost.

He's seen the numbers. He's having a hard time admitting that publicly, though. We've seen over the last four years that this is a person who has trouble sort of admitting a failure. And obviously, to lose a presidential election is the biggest failure. I think he will and pretty much has now said he lost, but he's only saying he lost because he's saying it's not his fault. Just moments ago, about 20 minutes ago, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, tweeting, quote, he won. He goes on to say he won because the election was rigged. You see that there. Everything after he won is a lie. So, yes, the numbers show that I lost,

but that's because the other side cheated. That's really the only way he can do that. And I say that because I've seen him for four years do this with everything from a small mistweet to, you know, big policy things. And this is what people around him have said is this is the way that he has to deal with this loss. So we know he's incapable of accepting that he's like the world's biggest loser right now. But what exactly is the game plan here? I mean, what is the strategy if not feeding his presidency anymore? Is he setting up his next chapter? I think he's starting to think about what that is. I mean, in terms of these next couple months, it really does sound like they that his campaign and his team and him, they're going to fight every way they can legally, you know, in the courts with recounts. But in December,

when the states certify these results and this election goes to the next chapter, which means, you know, it goes to Congress for this official stuff that happens that people don't really think about after the election, he's going to at some point have to acknowledge that he did lose and that he is going to be leaving the White House. I do think that he's starting to talk and think about what he wants to do next. I know people have spoken to him about different ideas, and he sort of started thinking about what that could be. What's on the table? Lots of different things. I think the thing that, first of all, that he talked about in 2016, you know, back in 2016, if everybody remembers, he wasn't supposed to win.

No one thought he was going to win, really. Not even himself. He didn't think he was going to win. So now the polls just closed and they start announcing numbers. And I say, oh, this is going to be embarrassing. I'm trying to figure out what am was going to win. So now the polls is closed and they start announcing numbers. And I say, oh, this is going to be embarrassing. I'm trying to figure out what am I going to do? And so he had told people that if he didn't win, that he was going to start some kind of conservative media outlet.

So I think that that is a real possibility and probably the number one possibility because he wants to keep the attention on himself. He wants to stay influential. He wants to make some money. He needs to make some money for his businesses. And so I think this hits all of those things. Now, what that turns into is a little bit unclear. It could be some kind of network on television, which is a bit more expensive. It could be something digital, which is a little bit cheaper. But I think he wants to have a conservative outlet. And of course, lately, he's been talking about how Fox News is not the place to go. And so it sounds like he sort of wants to rival Fox News.

Let's talk a bit more about the money. You mentioned that he needs to make some money. We've heard from The New York Times, who finally got a hold of his tax returns about how much debt he has, hundreds of millions of dollars of debt. When I see all these people out in the streets demanding that, you know, we get a recount of all legal votes and that the president's election was stolen from him and all this stuff, cynically, I can't help but think, oh, these are his fundraisers. He's keeping this base galvanized because he needs their money. Well, I do think it's some of that. I do think that if he could figure out a business venture where he could make money, now that

might be based on, you know, these followers, these supporters, you know, paying money for a news app or a conservative channel or something like that. That could be helpful to him. He does need to raise some money. We haven't seen the full picture of every of his finances, but we do know if the New York Times reporting is correct, that it's hundreds of millions of dollars that is due in debt, due in the next few years. So, I mean, that's a ton of money. The other thing people have to remember is he kept his businesses during the presidency, but a lot of the domestic businesses are not doing well for a couple of reasons. One, obviously the coronavirus, same thing that's hitting so many other businesses in America and around the world really are hitting his own. Also, his brand is a bit

tarnished, right? There are a lot of people in this country who love him. He has millions of supporters, but he has a lot of people that don't want to go into a Trump business anymore. So all of those things are a problem for him financially, and he needs to figure out a way to make some money. Has he already started trying to sort of parlay his base into fundraising support for his post-presidency? Well, anyone who follows him, his campaign, knows that they are sending out tons of emails and texts every day saying, please contribute to the legal fight.

So presumably that's the recounts and these lawsuits. But that could be used for other things. And there is reporting that he is going to have some kind of pack, leadership pack, which would allow him to raise money and then spend it, you know, either on candidates or just ways that he sees fit down the road. So you're saying he's already collecting money from people supposedly for legal battles on the election, but he's fully allowed to use that money for other political purposes or anything? Yeah, I mean, it really just depends what the fine print says. And if you look at some of these

things that he's been asking for money for, it could actually be used for other things like, you know, and this is not, this is pretty normal what I'm about to say, which is everybody who runs a presidential campaign, they have so many millions of dollars in bills that they need to pay. And you'll see that for years, years after the presidential race is over,

it takes, you know, these candidates years to settle up everything. It's just a massive, massive undertaking. So, you know, he could possibly, depending on what it says, and I know some of them do say this, he could use it to retire his debt on the campaign. So maybe it doesn't go to a lawsuit or a recount, but you see in the fine print, it could be used for other things and it could be used to pay off some of those other debts that this presidential campaign is going to have. And this is whether someone loses or wins. It doesn't matter. They have all these bills that they need to pay. In addition

to all the financial trouble he's facing when he gets out of the White House, he also has a fair amount of legal trouble waiting for him, right? That's right. It's a couple different kinds of things. There are two big investigations into some of his conduct that we know of, and then a lot of lawsuits. So the two that we know of are, remember when there was that allegation that Donald Trump and his associates paid off two women who said they had affairs with President Trump, these so-called hush money payments. Well, the Manhattan District Attorney is looking into that to see if that's a criminal campaign violation. So this is a criminal investigation. That's why it's so serious. But we've had some hints in some of the court documents

that this investigation is actually could be bigger and could be looking into tax crimes and insurance fraud. We don't know the scope of that, but we know that the prosecutors there are trying to get all the financial documents, including tax returns, that they possibly can. And that's a criminal investigation. So that's, you know, extremely serious. We also know the New York attorney general is looking into a variety of things. This is a civil investigation as of right now or what we know of it. So they is looking into a variety of things. This is a civil investigation as of right now or what we know of it. So they're looking into his loans. Now, these are business loans, you know, whether he got tax breaks and economic benefits that he maybe shouldn't have gotten.

So she's looking into that. And then I mentioned the lawsuits. There are many, many lawsuits alleging a variety of things. I think the one that I will mention that people will remember and think about is there are a number of women that claim that President Trump, before he was president, harassed them or assaulted them. And those cases are still out there and they're sort of winding their way through courts. The president's been able to sort of stave off a lot of these legal challenges and lawsuits because of his presidency. Does it get a lot scarier for him when he's just a civilian? Yeah, I really, really think so.

The presidency doesn't come with protections from state crimes or, you know, state investigations. But there is obviously power being president. There's a lot of disagreement among lawyers about whether a president could be even indicted or not. But there's not so much about a past president. So all of those protections leave when he leaves the White House. And, you know, he'll have to fight all these things. He'll have to hire attorneys to fight all these allegations and investigations. And, you know, there's a real possibility that he could face civil penalties, which could be things like fines, criminal penalties, you know, which could obviously be prison or anything like that. So, yeah, I think

all of those leave. Now, I have had a number of people say, look, they're still cachet to be a former president, right? You know, they're not like everybody else. They still know everybody. They still have a lot of power and influence. So it's just really unclear how he'll use that power and influence and whether people will still say, well, he's a former president, we shouldn't do anything right now. And of course, he'll be a former president who has throughout his life found ways to navigate around these sort of legal challenges. One way to obviously get around them for much longer is to run for president again, which is something that he has said that he might do, right? Yeah, you know, there are people who have suggested to him that he could run again in four years.

Now, if he's really thinking about that, and I think that he is, I mean, that seems like an admission that he didn't win this time, right? Because he can't serve for three terms. But yes, there is some possibility, and I know that some of his supporters and allies want him to announce, you know, the day that he finally acknowledges, really acknowledges that he didn't win this one or maybe an inauguration day 2021. So there's some talk about him doing that, whether he'll really go through with it in four years. I'm not sure. But I think there's something about keeping it open, keeping that option open. He remains in people's attention.

He remains influential if he says he's thinking about doing that. And what this weekend really made clear more than anything else to me was that Donald Trump isn't going away. He's going to be a part of American politics for years to come. Yeah, I mean, that really sounds like that is right for a couple reasons. One, there are more than 70 million people that voted for him. Many of them still think he won. They want to support him. They love him. Many of them still think he won. They want to support him. They love him. And he's been a different kind of figure than anyone else in the party. So they want someone like him. They

want him. But also because of Donald Trump's personality. He doesn't want to let this go. It's one of the reasons he's not conceding the election. He wants to keep that attention. He loves that attention and the adoration. So I think he wanted to keep that. That's the reason he drove by to see what it was like so people could catch a glimpse of him. I think that he's going to be around in some form or another for a while to come.