What A Day - Trump Could Lose, But Still Be In Power

Episode Date: October 25, 2024

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are preparing to make their closing pitches to voters ahead of Election Day. The Harris Campaign announced she’ll make her final arguments to the American people next week in a speech at the Ellipse in D.C., the exact same spot where nearly four years ago, then-President Donald Trump incited a mob of his supporters to march toward the Capitol. The Harris campaign said the decision to have the vice president speak at the Ellipse is meant to highlight the contrast between her and Trump, who still has yet to say whether he’ll accept the results of the upcoming election. Kyle Cheney, senior legal affairs reporter for Politico, says Trump is already laying the groundwork to challenge the election results if he loses. This time, he could be successful.And in headlines: Trump says he’ll fire Special Counsel Jack Smith if elected, Harris headlines a rally in Texas with Beyonce tonight, and Los Angeles County’s district attorney says he’ll recommend resentencing for the Menendez Brothers.Show Notes:Check out Kyle's piece – https://tinyurl.com/vn4cnjddSubscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/3kk4nyz8What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcastFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Friday, October 25th. I'm Jane Koston, and this is What A Day, the show that is deeply sorry for the tape of Tucker Carlson at a Trump rally in Duluth, Georgia we're about to play for you, in which Carlson compares America to a, quote, hormone-addled 15-year-old girl, and Donald Trump is like our dad. There has to be a point at which dad comes home. And when dad gets home, you know what he says? You've been a bad girl. You've been a bad little girl and you're getting a vigorous spanking right now. When I vote, I am voting for many reasons.

But I'm also voting against that. On today's show, Kamala Harris teases a Houston rally with Beyonce and Trump threatens special counsel Jack Smith's job again. But first, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are getting ready to make their closing pitches to voters ahead of Election Day. The Harris campaign announced that next week she'll make her final arguments to the American people in a speech at the Ellipse in D.C. This is, of course, the exact same spot where almost four years ago on January 6 then-President Donald Trump incited a mob of his supporters to march towards the Capitol. I said, something's wrong here, something's really wrong, can't have happened, and we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

The Harris campaign said the decision to speak at the Ellipse is meant to highlight the contrast between her and Trump. The vice president has been leaning heavily on making that contrast clear to voters in the waning days of the campaign. Here she is at her star-studded rally Thursday in Atlanta. It's either Donald Trump in there stewing, stewing over his enemies list, or me working for you, checking off my to-do list. You have the power to make that decision. It is your power. It is your power.

With just 11 days until Election Day, Trump still hasn't said whether he will accept the results of the 2024 election. He said he'll only accept the results if they're, quote, fair and legal, while also repeatedly spreading debunked voter fraud claims. Ahead of two rallies in Arizona on Thursday, Trump joined billionaire conservative radio host John Katsimatidis, who asked if Republicans had enough poll watchers in place to prevent election fraud. We don't need the votes.

We need to make sure that the ballots are counted properly and that new ballots are counted properly and that new ballots aren't added at bad times. Remember, Trump's number-one belief is that he can never lose, and if he loses, it's fraud. At a lot of his rallies lately, Trump has been imploring his supporters to vote early to make sure the results are, as he says, too big to rig.

We know how dire the consequences of this kind of rhetoric can be. We all watched what happened on January 6th. I lived in D.C. at the time. It was bad. And Trump is feeling the exact same kind of doubt and mistrust among his supporters. That could result in a similar attempt to overturn the results of the upcoming election if he loses. But this time around, he could be successful and manage to take power anyway.

That's the hypothetical scenario mapped out in a recent article for Politico. Kyle Cheney is senior legal affairs reporter for Politico. Kyle Cheney, a senior legal affairs reporter for Politico and one of the writers on the piece. He stopped by to talk about what a successful Trump power grab would look like. Kyle, welcome to What Today. Great to be with you. You write that Trump and his allies are already laying the groundwork to once again challenge the results of the 2024 election. And on Thursday, we learned that the House Republicans who sit on a committee that's charged with overseeing elections had hired people who were involved in the 2020

effort. So broadly speaking, what is the effort to subvert the election look like this time around, given everything that's happened since 2020? Sure. So in some ways, what we're seeing is almost too obvious to even point out in one sense is that Trump is raising doubts about the integrity of the vote. He's making unfounded claims of widespread fraud, that he can't lose unless Democrats commit massive election-changing fraud without, again, not backed by evidence. But that's the key initial ingredient if he's going to make an attempt to subvert the election. So should he lose after the votes are counted, planting those seeds and sowing that doubt was a key ingredient in 2020. And it's what we're seeing him already doing and underway in 2024. The one thing many of the people you spoke

with do believe will happen is that Donald Trump will try to declare himself the winner on election night, no matter how many votes are still outstanding. He did this four years ago. But what would be the fallout in an election that's expected to be even tighter than 2020? Well, everything flows from that. I think that we saw his allies have to sort of scramble to essentially make him look correct after when he declared himself the winner in 2020. And it sets in motion a whole series of processes and legal efforts to try to essentially back up that claim and raising doubts about votes that were counted later. And even though they're a very normal part of the process and the laws and the rules account for that. Again, it's a necessary ingredient in causing as many people as possible to distrust the outcome. Again, planting that seed

with your supporters to apply pressure on the people you need to help you actually accomplish that goal. Unlike 2020, however, Trump isn't in the White House this time around. He isn't in control of the government and he isn't in control of the military. Certifying the election won't come down to whether the vice president decides to uphold the Constitution or not. Shout out to Mike Pence. How much does that matter? It matters a great deal because I think that if this attempt happens, and again, this is a scenario where Trump has lost. He's been certified the loser of the election. He doesn't have these tools at his disposal to drive up that pressure. He wanted the Justice Department to go to bat for him in 2020.

He almost installed a new regime at the top of the Justice Department to make that happen, didn't ultimately pull the trigger at the end of the day. Same with the military. He talked about using the military to seize election equipment to try to help support his claims of fraud or foreign vote switching or whatever that were baseless, doesn't have those tools here. So what he would need in 2024 is a lot of help from people who are in power, legislative leaders in state houses and in Congress. Those people did not help him in 2020 the way he wanted them to. However, a lot of the people that stood in his path four years ago are gone. They've been replaced by people who are probably at least a bit likelier to do his bidding or what he needs them to do in 2024. What does that help look like? What would people have

to do that they didn't do four years ago? Well, the key thing would be state legislatures who Trump had asked to appoint alternate slates of presidential electors in 2020 would have to find the political will essentially that they didn't have then to take that step here. And then you get to Congress where you had a Democratic House in 2020. You could have one in 2024, 2025, depending on the election. That's a huge piece of the equation. If Democrats take the House, this path is essentially closed to him. But if Republicans keep the House, and they have a speaker who wants to help Trump accomplish this,

he has more ability to make that happen. What has Speaker Mike Johnson said about this? He was involved in the effort to overturn the 2020 election after all. So what does it look like for 2024? So it's a little tricky because Johnson, when he's been asked about the transfer of power, has said, I'm going to uphold the laws and the Constitution. We are going to do our job in Congress. A free and fair and legal election will be certified. And that is our hope and prayer across the board. Of course, I'm going to follow the Constitution. I'm going to follow the law. Which sounds good. And the problem is, a lot of Trump's allies in 2020 said the main law that we're talking about, the Electoral Count Act, is not constitutional. So therefore, to uphold the Constitution, as Mike Johnson says he wants to do, could mean, if you adopt that view, not uphold haven't done it. So we just don't know where he stands. And complicating it even further, he may not be the speaker, even if Republicans keep the House, because a lot of people want to challenge his position. Yeah, being the Republican Speaker of the House is literally volunteering to be the least popular

person among everyone you hang out with. In some ways, you make it seem like Trump may have an easier time overturning the results of 2024. You wrote, noise may be all Trump needs. Can you explain that? Sure. That's to escalate this to further stages of the process. The noise meaning, you don't have to win court battles necessarily to accomplish what he wants. In fact, losing court battles can, in some ways, even help his position because it's just more confirmation for the people who believe him when he say the election is stolen to say, see, the system is rigged against us. You know, we can't get help from the courts. We need to get help from our political allies, the people sitting in those state houses and sitting in Congress who can actually do something

about it. So in one sense, you win lawsuits, maybe you can actually change the outcome in a certain way, but that's unlikely. But losing creates that pressure and lets him create that pressure on others. So let's say theoretically, Republicans do take the House of Representatives. You mentioned that they would be essential to this scenario in which Trump loses the election, but somehow manages to take power anyway. How would that work? So this gets us to January 6th, essentially, when they have to count the electors that are sent in. Now, if you've had state legislatures send in alternate pro-Trump slates, even against what the popular vote shows in their state, that creates one scenario where you have Republicans trying to force a vote essentially on an alternate slate of electors. The other scenario is, and again, this is why you need the House, Mike Johnson, if he adopts the Trump position in 2020, can say, I don't believe the Electoral Count Act, which again, governs all of these proceedings,

is constitutional and binding on this Congress. And so I'm going to step outside of that framework and do more sort of radical scenarios, all with the purpose of either disqualifying Kamala Harris's electors or getting alternate pro-Trump electors a vote. I know you're a legal affairs reporter and not a campaign reporter, but the risks of this are not exactly a secret. He tried it four years ago, and he's already been sowing doubt, needed to make a second attempt. He's been doing that this entire election, once again refusing to say he'll accept the results of the election. Why do you think it isn't resonating more? I think in some ways it is sort of built into the persona. I mean, people have assumed and

warning and from the rooftops about what happened in 2020. You know, he's been criminally charged for what happened in 2020. It's hard to sort of assess the politics of it, but he has conditioned his supporters that, again, when he's challenged on this, this is the system trying to oppose me because I'm a threat to the system, which they like. It just sort of deepens the polarization. Given the extent to which local and state officials seem to expect this after what happened in 2020, what infrastructure is in place to stymie Trump if he tries again to subvert the vote?

Well, two things. I think the state officials we talked to are actually extremely confident that they will certify the results as cast. And that's important because, you know, there's been this fear that maybe Trump can use his allies on state and county election boards to prevent the certification. And that's not what we're hearing as the grave concern. And then the other big thing is the Electoral Count Act reforms that were signed by Joe Biden in 2022. Now, in a scenario where, again, Speaker Johnson says, those reforms don't apply to us, they're not constitutional, it's a little bit more complicated. But assuming that that is the law of the land, and it's treated that way, that is supposed to close off a lot of

these roots that Trump took in 2020, and make it much harder for Congress to consider any slate of electors that isn't the one certified by the governor. Kyle Cheney, despite the fact that I feel profoundly anxious after finishing your piece, thank you so much for joining us. Happy to join you. That was my conversation with Kyle Cheney, senior legal affairs reporter for Politico. We'll link to his story in our show notes. We'll get to the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends.

More to come after some ads. And now, the news. It's so easy. I would fire him within two seconds. Former President Trump is continuing his streak of threatening his enemies, this time on another right-wing podcast. In an interview with conservative podcaster Hugh Hewitt, Trump was asked what he'd do on his first day back in office if elected in November. Pardon himself or fire Special Counsel Jack Smith?

The prosecutor presiding over Trump's federal election interference case, and the case related to the mishandling of classified documents. And he went for Smith. Oh, it's so easy. It's so easy. He's a crooked person. If Trump wins, that's likely the end of Smith's federal cases, because Trump could have his Justice Department drop the cases. Trump will continue his podcast tour today on the Joe Rogan experience. Can't wait to find out who he'll threaten next. It's finally happening. The Kamala Harris-Beyonce collab we were so cruelly denied at this summer's

DNC. The two icons are scheduled to team up tonight for a Houston rally focused on abortion and reproductive rights. As usual, the presidential race in Texas is not expected to be even remotely close. But Democrats have been upping their game in the state in support of a seemingly very tight Senate race between incumbent Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Democratic Representative Colin Allred. Allred will be on stage during today's rally and spoke to Pod Save America about why he thinks Harris is making a stop in a deep red state this close to the election and what we can expect to hear at the rally. What's happening in Texas with this abortion ban is nothing short of a tragedy, and it is Ted Cruz's fault. We have all these harrowing stories that folks saw at the DNC,

that they see in commercials around the country. But many of them are my friends. They're these sexist women who come forward and use one of the most difficult moments in their life. They've taken that grief and that anger that they felt about it and they've turned it into action and they are inspiring. Now, I always say I have been hurt too many times to allow myself to believe that a Democrat can actually beat Ted Cruz. But maybe I'm ready to get hurt again? hurt too many times to allow myself to believe that a Democrat can actually beat Ted Cruz.

But maybe I'm ready to get hurt again? This is incredibly close, and I want everybody to drop all of your scar tissue that you might have around Texas. This is a race that we're going to win, but we need help. A new report found that the infant mortality rate in the U.S. is on the rise after the fall of Roe versus Wade. The Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics released a study earlier this week comparing the number of infant deaths before and after the Supreme Court's overturning of the landmark case of 2022. Researchers looked at the data from October 2022, just four months after Roe was overturned, as well as March and April of 2023. They found that infant mortality went up by 7%, which translates to hundreds more infants dying than expected per month. 80% of those deaths were linked to birth defects. Abortion

reporter Jessica Valente put it best in her newsletter earlier this week when she said, more babies are dying because women are being forced to carry non-viable pregnancies to term. And finally, for all of you out there who binged the Netflix series about the Menendez brothers, there's actually some news in the case. Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascom announced Thursday that he's going to recommend resentencing for Eric and Lyle Menendez, who were sentenced to life without parole in 1996 for killing their parents. I came to a place where I believe that under the law, resentencing is appropriate.

And I am going to recommend that to a court. The recommendation will be heard by a Los Angeles court judge on November 26th, who could order either a new trial or reduced prison time. The brothers could even potentially be released. Their trial in the 90s was one of the first to be televised. Eric and Lyle didn't deny killing their parents, but said they acted in self-defense as their father was abusive. Their lawyers say new evidence has emerged in the case, which has been the subject of renewed

attention on TikTok after the Netflix series. No word on whether or not Kim Kardashian's call for their release played a role in the AG's decision. And that's the news. One more thing. Yes, I know. The presidential race is a big deal that is currently sitting in your head 24 hours a day. But there are tons of down ballot races happening right now that could flip state houses and governor's mansions and impact the lives of millions of people. And we're highlighting them all the way up until election day. Case in point, Joe Saunders is running for Florida State House District 106. He and his husband are proud residents of Miami Beach, and Joe actually served in the Florida State House back in 2012.

Now he's running against a MAGA enthusiast with a history of alleged sexual harassment. I talked to Joe about his campaign, why he wants to go back to Tallahassee, and how he wants to get in the way of Governor Ron DeSantis' culture war crusade. Joe, thanks for coming on Water Day. Happy to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me. So you were a member of the Florida State House from 2012 to 2014. What made you want to return to the House? Why did you want back in after a decade of being free to go do literally anything else? Well, this is what I say a lot on the campaign trail here in Miami Beach. I talk about how I've spent a career in public service for 20 years. I've gone back and forth to the Florida Capitol. 18 of those have been as a nonprofit executive and civil rights leader here in the state. I understand the Florida Capitol really well, and I know different versions

of it that we've had. And the version that we've had for the last two years is deeply broken. Instead of real bipartisan solutions to problems that everybody cares about, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, like our property insurance crisis, what we've got from Tallahassee is manufactured culture wars, attacks on the LGBTQ community in terms of bills like the Don't Say Gay Law, abortion bans, and trying to give teenagers assault rifles. We just are deeply out of alignment with the state. And the only way to change that is to get some balance back in the Capitol. And that's what inspired me to run this year. You've described Florida as the, quote, poster child for anti-LGBTQ

extremism. And we've seen that in the slate of policies you just mentioned, enacted under Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, like Don't Say Gay, and the state's restrictions on gender-affirming care for adults and minors. I mean, even just petty bullshit, like saying that you couldn't fly a pride flag on a bridge. As someone from a very queer city like Orlando, how have you seen these policies affect your own community? And how do you plan to remedy that if Dems can break the GOP supermajority in the House? Well, listen, I think the strategy of Governor DeSantis and the Republican Party of Florida under his leadership is really simple. Make people in this state afraid of Black and transgender people, afraid of immigrants,

so that they're not afraid of actual bad people. So here's what's true. Under Governor Ron DeSantis, more anti-LGBTQ law has passed in the state of Florida than in the entire era of Anita Bryant. We as a state have gone from being the poster child of anti-LGBTQ extremism in the 1970s to being at the forefront of building bipartisan coalitions in support of true equality and inclusion and back again. So I believe in this state, I believe that Governor DeSantis' politics attacking drag queens and transgender people and the parents of transgender youth is not where people in the state really are. And the only way to get through that morass is to bring some balance back to the Capitol and break these conservative supermajorities. With that in mind, you're hoping to defeat incumbent Republican Representative Fabian Basabe, whose term has been mired in controversy.

Actually, the last 20 years of his life have been mired in controversy. Actually, the last 20 years of his life have been mired in controversy. Can you tell us a little bit about his actual record and how you believe he's voted against his constituents' interests? He sounds to me like a crazy person, but what has he done during his term that makes it clear to you that he cannot be reelected? Well, here's what's important for all of your viewers

to understand about my race. You know, you may not live in Miami Beach, but you should care about this district because it cuts straight through the heart of the battle to break the conservative supermajority in Tallahassee. So here's how my opponent won. He won by less than 300 votes that went to a hand recount in a seat that's been held by Democrats for more than 50 years. And he did that by running up and down the district, promising Democratic and NPA and even moderate Republican voters that he would be not a regular Republican,

he'd be a cool Republican. Oh, yeah, those cool Republicans. He wouldn't be there with the NRA. He wouldn't be down for attacks on drag queens and the LGBT community and our businesses and our bars. He would protect a woman's right to reproductive freedom. And the minute that he got there, he voted lockstep, not one vote out of alignment with Governor Ron DeSantis' culture wars. And what I say often is, you know, we should all be wary of politicians who will pander to us at pride, which Representative Basabe has tried to march in twice here in Miami Beach since being elected, and then vote against us in the Capitol. How are you and your campaign organizing to get people to

the polls? Because as you mentioned, the race between Basabe and his Democratic opponent in 2022 went to a hand count. How are you trying to get people to the polls and get people focused on this race? This time around, we're not taking a single vote for granted. We are everywhere. I'm wearing this very nice shirt to be with you here today, which I changed into just for this interview. And I'm putting my jersey back on and going to the early voting locations. We're knocking doors, we're making phone calls, we're doing meet and greets in condos. We are everywhere all at once. And I think that kind of organizing is what's going to get us over the finish line and have us flip the seat and break the conservative supermajority. Joe, thank you so much. Now you can go take this nice shirt

off and go to early voting locations. I will be there doing the good work. Thank you for giving us this platform. That was my conversation with Joe Saunders, Democratic candidate for Florida House District 106. Before we go, if you care about the planet, or even some of the people who live on it, the time for action is now. As part of Crooked Idea's anti-doom initiative, we're spotlighting the people who are fighting for our planet and working to solve the climate crisis every day. Stick around to the end of this episode to hear Crooked correspondent Priyanka Arabindi's conversation with the United States Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm. That's all for today.

If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, don't take Tucker Carlson's advice on parenting or anything else, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading, and not just about how Trump could theoretically steal the election without winning it, because any election Trump doesn't win is inherently suspect, because at his heart, Trump is an ignorant baby forced to wear pants. Like me. What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Koston, and go knock on some doors or something.

What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Raven Yamamoto. Our producer is Michelle Aloy. We had production help today from Tyler Hill, Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Clare. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adrienne Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gillyard and

Kashaka. Before you go, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is here as part of our Anti-Doom Initiative. I'm Priyanka Arabindi, and I sat down with Secretary Granholm to talk about how close we are to running on clean energy. Progressives have made a lot of progress on clean energy in the past decade. Can you walk us through some of those highlights in your mind and the things that really stand out to you as the biggest strides that we've made so far? Thank you, first of all, so much for having me on. I'm so glad to be able to talk about the fact that progressives can really champion that policy is making a difference. And especially with the

passage of the Biden-Harris Invest in America agenda, the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act, those laws combined have created an unbelievable explosion of deployment of clean energy across the country. So far, we have about 900 factories that have announced they're coming to America or expanding in America to make solar panels or EVs or batteries. 900 communities that potentially have been on their knees and are now seeing hope and opportunity in future-facing jobs. This year alone, we will be building out 30 Hoover dams worth of clean energy on our electric grid. I mean, solar project, wind projects, you name it. The president and the vice president have this goal of getting to 100% clean electricity on our grid by 2035.

We will be at 80% clean electricity on our grid by 2030, and that trajectory will continue to grow. We will see a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions just from these two laws by 2030. Yeah, it's really extraordinary. Can you detail some of the effects that this act is having already in these communities? Yeah, let me just give you some examples. In Wyoming, in Carbon County, which was the site of a coal plant, that county now, because of the transmission investments that we have made and because of the wind farm, North America's largest wind farm is now in Carbon County, Wyoming, and that wind is being

transmitted to the places where demand is really high. And they are seeing increased, of course, tax revenues, increased jobs, et cetera. They have been transformed. In Moses Lake, what was an agricultural town in the middle of Washington state, they now have four battery factories that are being built for creating the components for batteries for electric vehicles, four of them. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people being employed. I mean, there's so many examples. But across the country, in pockets that you would never imagine, people are seeing opportunity.

And that will only continue to grow. I know another big part of the Inflation Reduction Act are clean energy tax credits. Can you tell us how those tax credits work and how they've helped American households so far? Yeah, for everybody who's listening who hasn't taken advantage, perhaps, of these tax credits, this is the time to do it. I mean, these laws are like 10 years long, so there is a longer tail. You don't have to do it immediately. But honestly, if you've been thinking about putting solar panels on your roof,

you can get a 30% tax credit off the top to be able to put those solar panels in. If you've been thinking about doing insulation or installing a heat pump, it's a great option for many people. Tax credits for solar, tax credits to install EV charging stations, tax credits for all sorts of energy efficiency appliances. So much good news for consumers to lower their costs. Definitely. What do you say to people who have written this off or who think it's too late to do anything for the planet? What does that even mean, to be too late? If your garage in your house catches on fire, does that mean you just sit back and watch it and your whole house burn? Of course not. You start to take action to mitigate the damage, right? And that's what we're doing. So the United States is leading on this. And all of my counterparts, the other energy ministers, they look to what we've been doing. Initially,

they were like grumbling because we're getting all of this investment in the United States as a result of these. But now they're starting to copy it. And we're getting all of this investment in the United States as a result of these. But now they're starting to copy it. And we're like, great. We want as many countries as possible to take this on and to take it seriously. So, you know, the best time to plant a tree was yesterday. The next best time is today. And we are going to continue to plant those trees of opportunity to save our planet.

And we've been leading. And we hope the rest of the world catches up. Absolutely. Secretary Granholm, thank you so much for your time. You bet. Thank you so much for having me. Learn more about our anti-doom initiative at crookedideas.org. And to make sure that your voice is heard on everything you care about, please vote.