What A Day - Russiagate Reloaded

Episode Date: November 19, 2019

The trial of Roger Stone has led Democrats to dust off their old yellowed copies of The Mueller Report, and broaden the impeachment inquiry to crimes Trump may have committed outside of the Ukraine ones. Joe Biden’s recent comments about weed as a “gateway drug” (thank you, Vice President DARE Mascot) lead us to examine different candidates’ perspectives on marijuana legalization. And in headlines: the US signs off on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Trump backtracks on mango JUUL pods, and a tragic case of Jay against K.

It's Tuesday, November 19th. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And this is What A Day, the holographic Charizard of daily news podcasts. I will trade you 10 diglets. On today's show, we take stock of where the candidates stand on marijuana in the first installment of our new series, We Have Issues 2020. Then some headlines. But first, the Mueller report is back, baby. Maybe. OK, there's some news pertaining to special counsel Robert Mueller, which is a name I haven't heard in 200 years. House Democrats are investigating whether President Trump may have lied to Mueller in written answers he submitted

pertaining to the Russia investigation. This is according to an argument from the House's lawyer in federal court on Monday. That's right. Democrats have been interested in Trump's written answers to Mueller and whether they contain false information for a while. They've been seeking access to redacted materials from the Mueller report that they think will prove that Trump was lying in those written responses. And now they see added urgency because the impeachment inquiry is going on in this separate track from when Mueller ended. And there was a recent conviction of the longtime Trump advisor, Roger Stone.

We're going to get to that in just a minute. But the written answers themselves that Trump submitted came up earlier this year when Mueller testified to Congress. Here's a clip of how that went. Director Mueller, isn't it fair to say that the president's written answers were not only inadequate and incomplete because he didn't answer many of your questions, but where he did, his answer showed that he wasn't always being truthful. There, I would say, generally. Generally. Generally. Yeah.

So the House Democrats lawyer obviously pointed to that testimony to argue for access to all the grand jury material saying, well, if he sounded that way, like maybe there's some room for us to take a closer look at this. I see. So now is probably a good time to talk about Roger Stone then. So he was convicted of seven felonies just last week, things like lying to investigators, other crimes. He was also an informal advisor to Trump during his campaign. Obviously, if you're listening, you may know him as the guy with the giant Richard Nixon tattoo on his back. Can you explain what we learned from Roger Stone's trial that is relevant to this impeachment stuff? Yeah, sure. So basically, the gist of it is this. There was one incident that is now the focus of where people are sort of trying to tie all of these threads together.

Former Trump deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates testified in the Stone trial that he was in a car with Trump in mid 2016. And Trump took a call from Roger Stone. And when Trump got off the call with Roger Stone, he, quote, indicated more information would be coming. And this is all in the timeline of when there was that first WikiLeaks dump of hacked DNC emails. So the suggestion there is that if Trump is on the phone at that time hearing whatever it is that he heard and relaying this information, then he may have actually known about the WikiLeaks stuff, even though he's right now saying he didn't. Exactly. And, you know, I guess we don't know what Stone was relaying or if Stone actually did have access to this information

or if he was sort of hyping it up. But that specific incident is being zeroed in on as a potential example of Trump knowing about this in advance, you know, which would establish that there was a lie in the written statement that he submitted for the Mueller investigation. And that's the crime. That would be a trouble spot. Yeah, that would be great.

It wouldn't be great. So obviously, Trump didn't put it that way when he was writing it down. Yeah. He didn't say, I heard about this. Right, right. He did not offer up that potentially incriminating phone call in the car. Yeah, I can't imagine why he wouldn't. But like you said, that's probably where the lying would come in, which is what the Democrats have to prove. The onus is on them. And it could potentially

become a whole new area for the impeachment inquiry to delve into. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, for a long time, the focus from a lot of Democrats on the way they should go about impeachment was to keep it super limited. They said that they had this Ukraine story that was right in front of them. It was the bright flashing light.

It would be the easiest thing to show to the American people and say, look, Trump sought this from the Ukrainian president in exchange for this. And they could demonstrate how that was a problem, how, you know, that basically leveraging something like military aid for a form of bribery, as they're calling it, you know, would be a huge issue. Yeah.

At the very least, it would make him seem unfit to be president. Yes. At the very, very least. But other people throughout this entire time have been arguing, no, you shouldn't just keep it on that alone. If there are other things that we can wrap into this, by all means, do them. Because when they get to a point of saying, okay, these are the actual articles of impeachment that we would be trying this person for, they can include any and all of that information. Yeah. Wow. So just to reiterate, like House Democrats have so far seen pretty keen on making the inquiry about just, you know, democracy and what's better for the country.

And the more details outside of the scope of just the Ukraine stuff may be interpreted as just like sort of grasping at straws or just trying anything to get Trump out of office. Yeah. You know, there might be like a time concern as well, too. I'm speculating a little bit on that front. But you know, if the concern is sort of like, well, you know, get this done in a timely fashion such that there can be an election next year or whatever, whatever. Maybe that's playing into it as well. I don't know. Yeah, well, in any case, we now have investigations spawning investigations into these old investigations. Yes, it is a hydra of potential crime. Heads are sprouting every single direction.

That's just about it for now, though. We will keep you up to speed as this goes forward and let you know whether or not the House Democrats are finally able to get access to the Mueller materials that they are asking for. And one last thing. The current impeachment inquiry rolls on today in a big way. There's a flurry of testimonies today. Four is a flurry, right?

Yeah, impeachment's coming in. It won't stop coming. Back to the crimes and I hit the ground running. Oh, man. Does it make sense not to live for Ukraine? That is what we do this show for, is Smash Mouth. A little bit of, that's Barenaked Ladies. No, it's Smash Mouth. No way. It is Smash Mouth. Oh, bit of, that's Barenaked Ladies. No, it's Smash Mouth. No way.

It is Smash Mouth. Oh my God, I'm canceled. Okay. There it is. All right. Well, follow along during the hearings at crooked.com slash group thread to get all of our analysis and Slack musings. That's crooked.com slash group thread. This year, there's only one place where you can hear 10 serious-looking people in suits stand on a stage and talk about epic bong rips. It's the Democratic presidential primary. As many states move to legalize recreational drug use, everybody wants to know where the Democratic candidates stand on marijuana legalization. Their attitudes range from cool 70s grandma to mean 70s grandpa. We'll talk through it all and give some insights into why the push for legalization has become so urgent on today's installment of We Have Issues, the 4-2020 edition.

It's a weed joke. It's about weed. Hippie grass. Roll another blunt. Yeah. I feel forget about this this that and smash mouth are of a of a time and place and that time and place is the 90s yeah right oh man a 90s it was definitely 2000 it was 2000 i'm right about one thing all right uh so let's let's go ahead and unpack the bowl of candidates talking weed. Biden made headlines this weekend by referring to weed as a gateway drug at a town hall in Las Vegas. Let's hear what he had to say about that. The truth of the matter is there's not nearly been enough evidence that has been acquired as to whether or not it is a gateway drug. It's a debate. And I want a lot more

before I legalize it nationally. I want to make sure we know a lot more about the science behind it. Yeah, so now hearing this, you might think that Biden is trying to define himself as the primary's main blaze hater. But his plan is actually a little bit more progressive than this quote might make it seem. Biden's plan essentially looks to cut down on high rates of incarceration and fix the, quote, racial, gender, and income-based disparities in the system.

And his proposals include decriminalizing marijuana and expunging past convictions for possession. Yeah, and that seems good and right. And Biden's team definitely realized his gateway drug quote looks really bad and has those like strong 90s dare vibes like resist. Since they, you know, clearly they feel that way because they went out of their way on Twitter to correct some of the misconstrued information. Right, right, right. But Biden's calls for decriminalization still don't get him an invite to the van where all the cool Democrats are passing the duchy.

Pretty much all the other Democrats in the primary are taking a more progressive stance than him. Eleven of them want to fully legalize weed. That's Bennett, Booker, Buttigieg, Castro, Gabbard, Harris, Klobuchar, Sanders, Warren, Williamson, Yang, a full on dutchie van. And legalization is different from Biden's preferred decriminalization, which would basically tell law enforcement not to prosecute people for small amounts of possession. But when you legalize weed, you lift or abolish laws that ban actual buying and selling of marijuana, which would thereby let the government regulate and tax marijuana sales, giving them the potential to earn millions or billions of dollars. So this has obviously been something that people have cared about for a long time. Why is this election right now the time when people are kind of hashing this out?

Yeah. So over the past few years, also you said hashing, and I'm proud of that. I realized that as I did it. Not even a written weed joke. So that's just for us listeners. Okay. Over the past few years, young people and old people alike have realized that, you know, they don't really need to fear the reefer. In 2010, 52% of

Americans opposed cannabis legalization. Since then, that number has dropped drastically to 32%. So obviously, you know, as the plant has become more available and more and more states are legalizing it, even if just for medical use, people have started to change their minds about it. A huge majority of Democrats favor legalization, which explains why candidates feel so comfortable going out on a limb to say, you know, weed rules. I love Doritos. Yeah. And states have obviously gotten on board, too. So 33 of them and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana

for medical use. 11 states in D.C. have fully legalized marijuana for recreational use. And 22 states have decriminalized or removed jail time as a punishment for carrying small amounts of weed on your person. So when states do legalize, the benefits are real. You know, in Colorado, for example, tax revenues more than doubled in the three years following legalization in 2014. Higher people, higher revenues. That's exactly right. On top of that, people are finally realizing what it means when something is illegal, which means you can get arrested for it. And since this is America, we know that people of color are going to get arrested at a higher rate than white people. You know, over 600,000 people were arrested for marijuana violations in 2018. And almost 47% of those who were they were either

black or Latina, which is, you know, way overrepresented for the number of black and Latino people in our country. Yeah, right, right, right. And and let's say that we does get legalized federally, you know, under the next presidential administration. That means a bunch of barriers on businesses are lifted. But how would it all play out? Yeah. So a few ways, the tobacco lobby, the alcohol industry, pharmaceutical industry, they already are starting to have that reckoning about what it's going to mean for their businesses once, you know, legalization happens. And, you know, it seems like it's becoming less of a distant reality and seems pretty imminent. Many of those large corporations in those spaces

have pushed back on legalization, but some have just conceded that this is the future. And they're now investing in cannabis companies sort of preemptively so that they don't get left in the dust. A great example of this is Altria. It's the company behind Marlboro Cigarettes. They took a $1.8 billion stake in Kronos Group. That's a cannabis company. Another huge one is Constellation Brands. They own Corona, so beer. They invested in Canopy Group. It's a Canadian marijuana company. So obviously, they know that legalization is a topic that they can't afford to not be invested in, and they're not really going to wait to roll the dice. More sort of things that will probably happen if it gets legalized.

We can expect economic benefits, and that's for small business owners, for farmers. Cannabis companies argue that legalization bolsters economic growth through tax collections and the creation of tens of thousands of jobs. And analysts project sales could hit $80 billion by 2030. That's a pretty penny. Yeah. But maybe the most exciting outcome that we can expect from legalizing weed on the federal level would be this reinvestment in communities of color that have been disproportionately affected by the war on drugs. Gideon, you want to talk about how that figures in the Sanders plan?

Yeah. I think that it is interesting that people are kind of keying into that too, because I think the conversation was removed from it previously. But Senator Sanders' plan that he dropped at 4.20 p.m. back on October 24th includes expunging the records of nonviolent drug offenders and a $20 billion grant program within the Minority Business Development Agency. That's in order to provide grants to entrepreneurs of color who continue to face discrimination in access to capital. Yeah, so clearly the Dem candidates are thinking beyond just broad economic success and focusing on reparations for those black and brown people who've been effectively criminalized and then boxed out financially for the same things, making scores of white venture capitalists rich, rich. So that wraps up this installment of We Have Issues, the 42020 edition.

We'll return to this story for some quick hits as the election draws closer, and we'll definitely pass it your way if we uncover any new details. Don't hog it. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. The Trump administration says the United States will no longer consider Israel's settlements in the West Bank a violation of international law. This is a major departure from resolutions backed by the UN, the EU, and other U.S. allies, and undoes four decades of U.S. policy which deems those settlements illegitimate. The announcement is seen as the latest way for the Trump administration to tell right-wing

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, hey, we are basically the same guy. The move will make negotiating a two-state peace agreement in the area even harder than it already has been. On Sunday, Jay-Z made headlines when he was quoted being critical of Colin Kaepernick's participation in an NFL practice, referring to it as a publicity stunt. Then he made double headlines by claiming he was falsely quoted and he hadn't come after Kaep after all.

So normally I oppose naming whistleblowers, but this is atrocious. You do not try to pit J against K. You just can't do it. Oh man. President Trump is backing off from a plan to ban the sale of most flavored e-cigarettes after advisors warned of potential political ramifications of such a sweeping proposal. According to the New York Times, Trump's campaign manager was shown a poll indicating that battleground state voters who vape would not be happy with a ban in place. Now look, the only battleground I'm worried about

is the Sunoco station where I regularly have to fight to get the last mint Juul pod. I want a shirt that says voters who vape. So dumb. All right, the biggest fight of 2019 is not Ford versus Ferrari. It's actually the fight to release Trump's so dumb. All right. The biggest fight of 2019 is not Ford versus Ferrari. It's actually the fight to release Trump's tax returns. The Supreme Court put a temporary hold on deciding whether or not Trump's accounting firm will hand over the president's financial records to the House of Representatives.

Honestly, Trump, you can keep them at this point. You know, tax returns aren't interesting. And I'm mad at you for making me care about them. The lengths Trump has gone to keep his tax returns under wraps are unprecedented, and if he succeeds, it sets a dangerous precedent about whether the commander-in-chief has to obey the law. So just shove it. Famously intolerant chicken restaurant Chick-fil-A announced it will stop donating to several anti-LGBTQ organizations. Now, instead of visiting Chick-fil-A and feeling guilty about supporting bigotry, you can go to Chick-fil-A and just feel guilty about eating Chick-fil-A.

And now we have some important breaking wind. Yesterday evening, during a segment on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, an errant sound caught the ears of viewers across the nation. Now, we have a clip for our listeners here, but we encourage the intrepid investigators among you to seek out the videos yourself. I don't want to spoil anything, but this clip of Eric Swalwell is being referred to as Fartgate.

Taxpayer dollars to ask the Ukrainians to help them cheat an election. And the complaint that I've heard from the public... It was a fart. We're talking about a fart.

It was a fart. So, okay. Hardball is claiming that it was a mug scraping across the desk. I don't buy it. But frankly, we don't buy this spin. Nope. So that it was a mug scraping across the desk. I don't buy it. But frankly, we don't buy this spin. Nope.

So I have a mug in front of me here at WOD, and I'm just going to gently scrape it across the desk and see if I can replicate the same fart gate noise. No, it doesn't sound like, certainly isn't a fart sound. It just sounds like rubbing. Rubbing's not the same as farts. I don't know what strange whoopee cushion is attached to the mugs over there at Hardball, but couldn't do it.

And those are the headlines. That's all for today. We are news. So if you like the show, make sure you subscribe. Give us a rating. Leave a review. Download our.wmvs on LimeWire and tell your friends to listen. If you're into reading and not just WebMD articles about how many Flintstones vitamins you can safely eat like me, What A Day is also a nightly newsletter.

Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash newsletters. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And I was gonna go to class until I got high. What a Day is a product of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tunn is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein and our senior producer is Katie Long. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.